SWORDS 

AND 

PLOWSHARES 

BY 

ERNEST CROSBY 



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Class „ /^S5£2d' 
Book _. __^ £g S. ^ 
CopightF_ JS^^ 



COPyRIGHT DEPOSrr. 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/swordsplowsharesOOcros. 



SWORDS AND 
PLOWSHARES 



SWORDS AND 
PLOWSHARES 



/ 

By ERNEST CROSBY 

Antkor of '' Captain Jinks, Hero,'' "■Plain Talk in Psalm and 
Parable,'" etc. 



And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, 
and their spears into pruninghooks. 

— Isaiah 



9 

> 3 3 J » 




FUNK df WAGNALI<S COMPANY 

LAFAYETTE PI.ACE, NEW YORK 
1902 



THt I .bRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

m 22 1903 

Copyiight Entry 
CLASS W^ Mc. No. 



COPY Bf 






COPYTIIOHT, igoi, BT 

ERNEST CROSBY 

Registered ai Stationers' Hall, London, England 

[P&UTTED IN THB UNICTED STATES OF AMB&ICA] 

Published in November, 1903 



To 

The Noble Army 

OF 

Traitors and Heretics 



CONTENTS 



Th« God of War 9 

The Victory 10 

Christianity and War 10 

War and Hell ii 

The Conqueror t4 

"Rebels" 24 

The Flag 26 

The Proposed Dewey Arch 27 

The Military Creed 28 

Cuba Libre 29 

The Pirate Flag 30 

The Real "White Man's Burden" 33 

The Bugler in the Rear 35 

Russia and America, August 29, 1898 37 

The Peace Congress 38 

Woman and War 43 

Omdurman 44 

The Boer War , 45 

Dreyfus " Guilty " . 47 

The Epitaph 48 

Love's Patriot 50 

Millennial , . 51 

Peace 52 

Ye Anglo-Saxons 53 

The Anglo-American Alliance 54 

Bloody Men 56 

Sport 57 

Great 58 

Rapid Transit . , 59 

New York 60 

7 



Contents 

PAOS 

Feeling Big 6i 

Dreamers 63 

Godward 64 

The Self 75 

Faith and Truth 75 

The Collection 76 

The Machines 79 

Joy in Work 82 

The Joy of Creating 84 

Love and Labor 86 

Bread and Justice 87 

Civilization 89 

Love Comes 91 

A Chaplet of New Ideals 92 

Grand Old Men 93 

The Best and Greatest 94 

Edward McGlynn 95 

Life and Death 95 

The Tyrants' Song 96 

Love the Oppressors 97 

The Round-Up of Love 98 

Look ! 98 

Hearts 99 

Wings 100 

Outward Bound loi 

When the Bobolink Flies Low 103 

May . 103 

My Journey 104 

The Veery's Note 105 

Farm Pictures 107 

The Sheep-Dog 126 

Epilog 126 



8 



The God of War j^ 

From the French of Theodore Jean 

SO be it ! Our globe is but a hell 
Of torments, crimes, and sins abhorred, 
Where Force by dint of fire and sword 
Subdues his vidlims all too well. . . . 

O god whom patriots adore, 

I scorn thee ; for in thee I see 

The symbol of barbarity. 
Therefore I hate thee, god of war ! 

As mothers curse thee, so curse I — 

Mothers whose sons were racked with pain, 
Whose mutilated bodies slain 

Are heaped in vain beneath the sky. 

With pick and hammer let us rise 
And break this idol-shape of stone, 
Breathing forth slaughter from his throne 

Hid in the inmost shrine of lies. 

Down with the temple which above 

Sets up a blood-bespattered rag ! 

And let us with a world-wide flag 
Find freedom in the work of love. 



The Victory 
The Victory j^ 



From the Chinese of Lao- Tsne 



HE who hath slain his thousands in the fray 
Should shed hot tears, and celebrate the day 
With funeral rites, such as wan mourners pay. 



Christianity and War j^ 

From the German of BcdenstecU 

TALK, if you will, of hero deed, 
Of clash of arms and battle wonders ; 
But prate not of your Christian creed 

Preached by the cannon's murderous thunders. 

And if your courage needs a test, 

Copy the pagan's fierce behavior ; 
Revel in bloodshed east and west, 

But speak not with it of the Savior. 

The Turk may wage a righteous war 

In honor of his martial Allah ; 
But Thor and Odin live no more — 

Dead are the gods in our Valhalla. 

Be what you will, entire and free, 

Christian or warrior — each can please us ; 

But not the rank hypocrisy 
Of warlike followers of Jesus. 

lO 



War and Hell 

War and Hell j^ 

I 

WAR is hell," because it makes men devils. 
You and I, striving for a moment to squeeze 
or hack the life out of each other, are we 
not at once transformed into demons ? 
Hell is ever man's handiwork. 

II 

BRITISH viaory in the Soudan ! 
The enemy clung obstinately to the trenches, 
ajid were bayonetted in them. 

Nothing could have been finer than the behavior of 
the troops. ' * 

Nothing finer indeed ! 

White Christian soldiers, three thousand miles from 
home, in the pay of white Christian bond- 
holders, bayonetting black Mohammedans for 
defending their native land, and setting the 
example of bloodshed to brown Mohammedans 
whom they had already trained to slaughter ! 

Good God, is it too much to hope that the day may 
come when every sane man will shrink from 
running a bayonet into a fellow-creature as he 
would now shrink from torturing a baby ? 

We look back with pity, contempt, and detestation on 
the times of the rack and wheel and fagot — we, 
who are still in the thick of the Dark Ages our- 
selves ! 

II 



War and Hell 

A thousandfold better to be a true Mussulman dervish 
fighting for his home, than one of these Chris- 
tian hypocrites emphasizing their barbarian 
butcheries with chaplains and crosses and Te 
Deums and every kind of shameless lie and 
blasphemy ! 



in 

HOW they buzzed round the fires at Smithfield, 
The black, perverse, froward, reverend clergy ! 
(Like June beetles round the hall lamp), 
Teaching the Gospel and knowing not the first word 

of it- 
More cruel, revengeful, bloodthirsty than the ignorant 

mob they instrudled — 
Bhnd, malignant, pompous leaders of the blind ! 

And so to-day round the fires of war — the flash of 

artillery and glance of bayonets 
(But at safe distance, impotent), 
Again the dismal brood swarms — hysterical, smirking, 

grimacing — 
Still as oblivious of all their Master taught. 
Still going further than the thoughtless populace in 

their lust and frenzy. 
Still impious, blasphemous, sacrilegious, profane 
Gloating like harpies over the nation's sins. 

12 



War and Hell 

IV 

I UST a glimpse at the coast of England as we touch 

J at Plymouth on our way up the Channel. 
What are those red spots on the shore ? 

They are the red coats of soldiers breaking out like the 
blotches of scarlet fever all over the land. 

Poor, sick England, what foul disease have you got in 
your blood ? 

Silly children may think as they look in the glass that 
the rash on their faces is pretty. 

And so you English are silly children. 

And you have inoculated my country too with your 
distemper. 

America has caught it and is proud of it. 

We pretend that we like to reel along with high tem- 
perature and drum-pulse beating loud. 

A few years ago a man might travel from ocean to 
ocean without seeing a single epaulet ; it was 
the glory of the land. 

But now we are as sick as any of you. 

The world is a great hospital of silly, sick nations, 
boasting of the number of their pestiferous pus- 
tules. 



THERE is " great rejoicing at the nation's capi- 
tal." So saj^s the morning's paper. 
The enemy's fleet has been annihilated. 
Mothers are delighted because other mothers have lost 
sons just like their own ; 

13 



War and Hell 

Wives and daughters smile at the thought of new- 
made widows and orphans ; 

Strong men are full of glee because other strong men 
are either slain or doomed to rot alive in tor- 
ments ; 

Small boys are delirious with pride and joy as they 
fancy themselves thrusting swords into soft 
flesh, and burning and laying waste such homes 
as they themselves inhabit ; 

Another capital is cast down with mourning and 
humiliation just in proportion as ours is raised 
up, and that is the very spice of our triumph. 

How could we exult without having a fellow man to 
exult over ? 

Yesterday it was the thrill of grappling with him and 
hating him ; 

To-day we grind our heel into his face and despise 
him. 

This is life — this is patriotism — this is rapture ! 

But we — what are we, men or devils ? and our Chris- 
tian capital — what is it but an outpost of hell ? 



VI 



WHO are you at Washington who presume to 
declare me the enemy of anybody or to declare 
any nation my enemy ? 
However great you may be, I altogether deny your 
authority to sow enmity and hatred in my soul. 

14 



War and Hell 

I refuse to accept your ready-made enemies, and, if I did 
accept them, I should feel bound to love them, 
and, loving them, would you have me caress 
them with bombshells and bayonets ? 

When I want enemies, I reserve the right to manufac- 
ture them for myself. 

If I am ever scoundrel enough to wish to kill, I will 
do my own killing on my own account and not 
hide myself behind your license. 

Before God your commissions and warrants and enlist- 
ment rolls, relieving men of conscience and in- 
dependence and manhood, are not worth the 
paper they are written on. 

Away with all your superstitions of a statecraft worse 
than priestcraft ! 

Hypnotize fools and cowards if you will, but for my 
part, I choose to be a man. 



VII 



I AM no patriot. 
I do not wish my countrymen to overrun the world. 
I love the date-palm equally with the pine-tree, and 

each in its place. 
I am as true a friend to the banana and orange as to 

the pear and apple. 
I thank the genial breath of climate for making men 
different. 

IS 



War and Hell 

I am glad to know that, if my people succeed in spread- 
ing over the face of the earth, they will grad- 
ually differ from each other as they attune 
themselves to every degree of latitude and 
longitude. 

Humanity is no air to be strummed on one note or 
upon one instrument. 

It is a symphony where every note and instrument has 
its part, and would be sadly missed. 

I do not take the side of the cornet against the violin, 
for the comet needs the violin. 

I am no patriot. 

I love my country too well to be a patriot = 



VIII 

1SAW them take the blockhouse on the hill by 
storm. 

First advancing slowly in the woods in groups, dodg- 
ing from tree to tree and firing rapidly, the 
machine gun grinding out death with its sharp 
metallic rattle, while the smell of powder fills 
the air. 

Now they rush into the open and up the steep slope. 

Some of them fall. One I see plunge backward down 
the hill with his arms in the air ; another stum- 
bles forward up-hill on his face and elbows. 

For an instant they waver ; then up again they go. 

Men spring up from the ground at the top of the hill 
and run away. 

i6 



War and Hell 

The assailants disappear for a moment in invisible 

trenches, and then I see them, too, running 

beyond. 
There is a great hurrah ; the flag comes down on the 

blockhouse and another goes up. 
They dance about like children, shouting, throwing 

up their caps, and waving their swords and 

muskets in a delirium of joy. 
I do not blame them. They have never felt such a 

thrill before. Shall we deprive them of the 

most ecstatic moment of their lives ? 
Ecstasy with murder is better perhaps than the dull 

level of existence without. 
It would do them no good to go without murder. 
There is no good in going without things. 
The good consists in having something better than the 
y things you go without. 

'^Oh, if they only knew that there is a higher ecstacy, 

a deeper thrill, an inexhaustible courage and 

contempt of death ! 
Then how quickly they would let pistol and bayonet 

drop harmless from their hands ! '^' 



IX 

HAIIy to the hero ! 
Decked out in blue, red, and gilt, as in war- 
paint — 
Rejoicing like a savage in a long head-feather and 
gold shoulder fringes — 

17 



War and Hell 

Proud to commit with these adornments all the crimes 
for which he would be disgraced and punished 
as a felon without them — ^ 
' Modestly bearing on his breast a star and ribbon which 
say, " I am a hero," as plainly as the beggar's 
placard says " I am blind " — / 

Followed by a brass band and bass drum, which screw 
up his courage at a pinch like the war dance 
and tom-tom of the Central African and red- 
skin — 

Vain of his manliness in the field while indulging in 
effeminate quarreling over the honors, at the 
rate of a month's quarreling to a half-hour's 
fighting — 
/Admitting that he obeys orders without thinking, and 
thus proclaiming his complete abdication of 
conscience and intellect — / 

Rushing home from the fray to advertise himself in 
the magazines at a hundred dollars a page — 

Hail to the hero ! 

O shade of Cervantes ! 

Come back and draw for us another Don Quixote. 

Prick this bubble of militarism as you pricked that 

other bubble of knight-errantry. 
The world yearns for your reappearing. 
Come and depicfl the hero ! 



i8 



War and Hell 



BUT, you say, there have been good wars. 
Never, never, never ! 

As I look back at our ' ' good ' ' war — at the indelible 
bloody splash upon our history — the four years' 
revel of hatred — the crowded shambles of foiled 
Secession — 

I see that it was all a pitiable error. 

That which we fought for, the Union of haters by 
force, was a wrong, misleading cause : the wor- 
ship of bigness, the measure of greatness by 

/ latitude and longitude. 

' A single town true enough to abhor slaughter as well 
as slavery would have been better worth dying 
for than all that tempestuous domain.-^' 

From the seed then sown grew up imperialism and 
militarism and capitalism and a whole forest of 
stout, deep-rooted ills in whose shadow we lead 
an unhealthy, stunted life to-day. 

The incidental good — the freedom of the slaves, illu- 
sive, unsubstantial freedom at best, freedom by 
law but not from the heart — does it really quite 
balance the scales ? 

XI 

NAY, violence can only degrade a noble cause. 
Behold the French Revolution. 
Wave of brotherly love, sweeping over feudal France 
(When noblemen embraced coal-heavers and threw 
away their privilege and rank), 

19 



War and Hell 

Breath from heaven, inspiring a nation with new life, 

What changed you into a frightful tempest, all hell 
raining and thundering and lightening upon 
the defenseless earth ? 

Goddess of freedom and love, how were you trans- 
formed into the fiend of bloodshed and hate ? 

Ah! they did not know, those Titanic lovers, that vio- 
lence, however employed, drives out all liberty 
and love in the end. 

Violence curdles the love that wields it into hatred, 
and wherever it strikes, as from the drooping 
branch of a banyan tree, spring up fresh shoots 
of hate. 

Oh, if they had only known ! 

And we, when another such wave passes over the land, 
shall we have learned ? 

Shall we know the truth better than they ? 



XII 



DOWN with the tiger in each of us ! 
He has his proper place, no doubt, in the econ- 
omy of nature, but it is in the depths of our 
own private bottomless pit. 
There he growls and mutters as he chafes behind the 

bars. 
There is only one safe course to pursue : lock him up 
firmly and securely, and pay no heed to his 
subterranean roar. 

20 



War and Hell 



XIII 



WHAT do they accomplish who take the sword ? 
Now and then they cut off the ear of a ser- 
vant of the high priest ; 
Quite as often they lose their own. 
While they who say, ''Put up thy sword into its 
place," tho they die, yet succeed sometimes in 
changing the heart of the world. 



XIV 



WHAT is true peace but conscious strength ? 
What is war but conscious weakness seeking 
to give proof of its strength ? 
Peace is a god, not a goddess, a man not a woman — 
A brawny, bearded man of might, with nothing but 
the kindly look in his eyes to distinguish him 
from the vulgar giant. 
He can afford to smile at War, the headstrong boy, 
rushing, red-faced, blundering, blustering, with 
impetuous arms, hither and thither. 
Peace has outgrown all that, for Peace is a man. 



21 



War and Hell 



XV 



THE old, old dream of empire — 
The dream of Alexander and Caesar, of Tamer- 
lane and Genghis Khan — 

The dream of subjedl peoples carrying out our sover- 
eign will through fear — 

The dream of a universe forced to converge upon us — 

The dream of pride and loftiness justified by strength 
of arms — 

The dream of our arbitrary ' ' Yea ' ' overcoming all 
* ' Nays ' ' whatsoever — 

The dream of a cold, stem, hated machine of an 
empire ! 

But there is a more enticing dream : 
The dream of wise freedom made contagious — 
The dream of gratitude rising from broken fetters — 
The dream of coercion laid prostrate once for all — 
The dream of nations in love with each other without 

a thought of a common hatred or danger — 
The dream of tyrants stripped of their tyrannies and 

oppressors despoiled of their prey — 
The dream of a warm, throbbing, one-hearted empire 

of brothers ! 

And will such a life be insipid when war has ceased 

forever ? 
Be not afraid. 
Do lovers find life insipid ? 
Is there no hero-stuff in lovers ? 

22 



War and Hell 



XVI 



1AM a great inventor, did you but know it. 
I have new weapons and explosives and devices to 
substitute for your obsolete ta<5lics and tools. 
Mine are the battle-ships of righteousness and integ- 
rity — 
The armor-plates of a quiet conscience and self -respe<5l — 
The impregnable conning -tower of divine manhood — 
The Long Toms of persuasion — 
The machine guns of influence and example — 
The dum-dum bullets of pity and remorse — 
The impervious cordon of sympathy — 
The concentration camps of brotherhood — 
The submarine craft of forgiveness — 
The torpedo-boat-destroyer of love — 
And behind them all the dynamite of truth ! 
I do not patent my inventions. 
Take them. They are free to all the world. 



XVII 

I AM a soldier too, and I have the battle of battles 
on my hands. 
You little warriors who, while fighting each other, 
are yet at heart agreed, and see the same false 
life with the same distorted eyes, 
I have to make war upon all of you combined, and 
upon the infernal War Spirit which inspires 
you in the bargain. 

23 



The Conqueror 



I set my courage against your courage. 

It is fine not to flinch under fire. 

It is also fine to tell an unwelcome truth to a mob 

and to call you the mad lot of murderers that 

you are. 
It is war between us to the knife, and I will not tell 

you how well I love you until you are shamed 

into unconditional surrender. 
Then I will show you my commission, and you will 

see that it is signed by a Commander-in-Chief 

who may wait long for vi<5lory, but never waits 

in vain. 



The Conqueror j^ 

* I I ATE will not yield to hatred soon or late, 

1 1 However patiently we hope and wait, 
lyove is the only conqueror of hate. 



"Rebels" j& 



SHOOT down the rebels — men who dare 
To claim their native land ! 
Why should the white invader spare 
A dusky heathen band ? 

24 



"Rebels" 



You bought them from the Spanish king, 
You bought the men he stole ; 

You bought perchance a ghastlier thing — 
The Duke of Alva's soul ! 



" Freedom ! " you cry, and train your gun 
On men who would be freed, 
And in the name of Washington 
Achieve a Weyler's deed. 

Boast of the benefits you spread, 
The faith of Christ you hold ; 

Then seize the very soil )^ou tread 
And fill your arms with gold. 

Go, prostitute your mother-tongue, 
And give the ' ' rebel ' ' name 

To those who to their country clung, 
Preferring death to shame. 

And call him ' ' loyal, ' ' him who brags 

Of countrymen betrayed — 
The patriot of the money-bags, 

The loyalist of trade. 

Oh, for the good old Roman days 

Of robbers bold and true, 
Who scorned to oil with pious phrase 

The deeds they dared to do — 

25 



The Flag 



The days before degenerate thieves 

Devised the coward lie 
Of blessings that the enslaved receives 

Whose rights their arms deny ! 

I hate the oppressor's iron rod, 
I hate his murderous ships, 

But most of all I hate, O God, 
The lie upon his lips ! 

Nay, if they still demand recruits 

To curse Manila Bay, 
Be men ; refuse to act like brutes 

And massacre and slay. 

Or if you will persist to fight 

With all a soldier's pride. 
Why, then be rebels for the right 

By Aguinaldo's side ! 



The Flag j^ 

Who has hauled down the flag 

IS it the men who still uphold 
The principles for which it stood ; 
Who claim that ever as of old 
Freedom is universal good ? 

26 



The Proposed Dewey Arch 

Or is it those who spurn the way 
That Washington and Lincoln trod ; 

Who seek to make the world obey, 
And long to wield the master's rod ? 

Who boast of freedom, but prepare 
Shackles and chains for distant shores, 

Who make the flag the emblem there 
Of all that Liberty abhors ? 

These have hauled down the flag ! 



The Proposed Dewey Arch j^ 

BUILD up your arch. Lay snowy stone on stone 
To herald to the world your glittering pride 
In foreign conquest. Lightly fling aside 
That irksome creed of Liberty outgrown. 
Let your new toys, your ships and guns, atone 
For broken faith and precedent defied. 
Proclaim your marble goddess far and wide 
Freedom no more, but Might, and Might alone ! 

Nay, 'tis a whited sepulcher you raise, 
Whereon shall this stem epitaph be read : 

' ' Here at the silent parting of the ways 
Fell Liberty, betrayed, beguiled, misled. 

Pray for her, stranger, that in happier days 
She may be raised immortal from the dead." 

27 



The Military Creed 
The Military Creed 



The American Admiral in command at Samoa 
was asked what he thought of expansion. He is 
reported to have answered, ''* I do not think; I 
obey orders." 

CAPTAIN, what do you think," I asked, 
" Of the part 3'our soldiers play ? " 
The captain answered, * * I do not think — 
I do not think — I obey." 

* * Do you think you should shoot a patriot down 

And help a tyrant slay ? ' ' 
The captain answered, ** I do not think — 

I do not think — I obey." 

' ' Do you think that your conscience was meant to 
die 

And your brains to rot away ? ' ' 
The captain answered, " I do not think— 

I do not think — I obey." 

'* Then if this is your soldier's code," I cried, 

*' You're a mean, unmanly crew, 
And with all your feathers and gilt and braid 

I am more of a man than you ; 

* ' For whatever my lot on earth may be, 

And whether I swim or sink, 
I can say with pride, * I do not obey — 

I do not obey — / thi7tk .'' ' " 

28 



Cuba Libre 
Cuba Libre* j^ 

WHEN we sailed from Tampa Bay 
(Cuba Libre!), 
And our ships got under weigh 

(Cuba Libre!), 
As we floated down the tide, 
Crowding to the steamer's side, 
You remember how we cried 
*' Cuba Libre!" 

When we spied the island shore 

(Cuba Libre !) 
Then we shouted loud once more 

''Cuba Libre!" 
As we sank Cervera's ships. 
Where the southern sea-wall dips, 
What again was on our lips ? 

''Cuba Libre!" 

These are foreign words, yo\x know — 

" Cuba Libre ! "— 
That we used so long ago 

(Cuba Libre!); 
And in all the time between 
Such a lot of things we've seen, 
We've forgotten what they mean— 

"Cuba Libre!" 



* Reprinted here from Life by courtesy of the lyife Publishing Com- 
ly of New York. 



pany 

29 



The Pirate Flag 



Let us ask the President 

(Cuba Libre!), 
What that bit of Spanish meant — 

'•Cuba Libre!" 
Ask the Senate, Root, and Hay 
What on earth we meant to say, 
When we shouted night and day, 

''Cuba Libre!" 

But alas! they will not speak 

(Cuba Libre!), 
For their memories are weak 

(Cuba Libre!), 
If you have a lexicon, 
Borrowed from a Spanish don, 
Send it down to Washington 

(Cuba Libre!). 



The Pirate Flag j0^ 



I HAD an ugly dream last night, 
And I was far away, 
A-sailing on a man-of-war 

Far up Manila Bay. 
And as I cast a glance aloft 
It made me stand aghast 
To see a jet-black pirate flag 
A-flying from the mast. 

30 



The Pirate Flag 

And then around me fore and aft 

The guns began to roar, 
And flames sprang up and soon enwrapped 

A village on the shore. 
I took my glass and clearly saw 

Women and children run, 
While soldiers in the palms behind 

Were potting them for fun. 

Far to the left some dusky men 

Pought bravely on a knoll, 
But, overcome at last, they raised 

A white rag on a pole ; 
Yet still the soldiers shot them down 

And I could almost hear 
Their laughter as they seemed to shout, 

* ' No prisoners wanted here ! ' ' 

Then when the last defender fell 

The men rushed in with glee, 
And from each house they came with loads 

Of plunder sad to see ; 
And soon we sent a boat ashore — 

Blue- jackets and marines — 
To get our share of loot and swag, 

And spoil the Philippines. 

I turned and asked a sailor lad — 

For now they stood at ease — 
What pirates we might chance to be 

Who plagued these summer seas. 

SI 



The Pirate Flag 



" Oh, we're no pirates," lie replied, 

" Don't ask me that again ; 
This is a ship of Uncle Sam 

And we are Dewey's men." 

' * But how is that ? " I said once more ; 

* * Where are our stripes and stars ? 
And does that inky flag up there 

Belong to honest tars ? ' ' 
" To tell the truth, it's rather queer," 

Replied embarrassed Jack, 
' ' But something in the climate here 

Has turned Old Glory black. 

* * We wash her in the briny sea 

And in the streams on land : 
We scrub her with the best of soap, 

And rub her in the sand ; 
And all our Chinese laundrymen 

And all our laundry maids 
Have tackled her, but still she looks 

Black as the ace of spades. 

" There's something in the climate here 

That changes things around, 
And what the reason of it is 

We none of us have found. 
And so we don't know what to say, 

Or even what to think. 
When people ask us what has made 

Old Glory black as ink." 

32 



The Real White Man's Burden 

Just then the boat came back from shore 

Well laden down with spoil — 
With goods that told of many years 

Of Filipino toil ; 
And Jack ran off to get his part, 

Nor came he ever back, 
And I awoke and never learned 

What turned Old Glory black. 



The Real "White Man's Burden" ^ 

With apologies to Rudyard Kipling 

TAKE up the White Man's burden. 
Send forth your sturdy kin. 
And load them down with Bibles 

And cannon-balls and gin. 
Throw in a few diseases 

To spread the tropic climes, 
For there the healthy niggers 
Are quite behind the times. 



And don't forget the factories. 

On those benighted shores 
They have no cheerful iron mills, 

Nor eke department stores. 
They never work twelve hours a day, 

And live in strange content, 
Altho they never have to pay 

A single sou of rent. 



The Real White Man's Burden 

Take up the White Man's burden, 

And teach the Philippines 
What interest and taxes are 

And what a mortgage means. 
Give them electrocution chairs, 

And prisons, too, galore, 
And if they seem inclined to kick, 

Then spill their heathen gore. 

They need our labor question, too, 

And politics and fraud — 
* We've made a pretty mess at home, 

Let's make a mess abroad. >/' 
And let us ever humbly pray 

The Lord of Hosts may deign 
To stir our feeble memories 

Lest we forget — the Maine. 

Take up the White's Man's burden. 

To you who thus succeed 
In civilizing savage hordes, 

They owe a debt, indeed; 
Concessions, pensions, salaries, 

And privilege and right — 
With outstretched hands you raised to bless 

Grab everything in sight. 

Take up the White Man's burden. 
And if you write in verse, 
' Flatter your nation's vices 

And strive to make them worse. "^ 

34 



The Bugler in the Rear 

Then learn that if with pious words 

You ornament each phrase, 
In a world of canting hypocrites 

This kind of business pays. /^ 



The Bugler in the Rear j^ 

To Rudyard Kipling 

STRONG bugler, whose deep-chested strain 
Has cheered the march of man 
From. Simla to the coast of Maine, 

From Cork to Kordofan, 
Oh, tell me, while your rhythmic flow 

Still fascinates my ear, 
Why is it that you choose to blow 
Your bugle in the rear ? 

For clarion notes like yours should sound 

The order to advance — 
The prophet's thunder- words profound 

That voice the prophet's glance — 
The prophet's glance that first beholds 

The new-bom day appear ; 
You spy not what the future holds, 

A-bugling in the rear. 

Your bugle-note is that which calls 

King Ramses to the fight, 
Sculptured on Kamak's crumbling walls 

At twenty times his height. 

35 



The Bugler in the Rear 

Again you blow his ancient horn, 
That pygmy tribes may fear, 

You're harking back to times outworn, 
A-bugling in the rear. 

Like you, the narrow Jew looked down 

Upon the Gentile bands ; 
Like 3^ou, proud Romans used to frown 

On broad, " barbarian ^' lands ; 
And Attila and Genghis Khan 

Knew well your bugle bold ; 
For pagan, Jew, and Mussulman 

Have heard its blare of old. 

And so the Norman, when he came 

Across the narrow wave, 
And made the Anglo-Saxon name 

The synonym for * ' slave ' * ; 
And so the Corsican who hurled 

His bolts like hell unpent, 
And won the hatred of the world 

To soothe his banishment : 

These, all of these, from times remote, 

In every land and clime, 
Have heard your ancient bugle-note 

Of war and waste sublime ; 
And, ere man's footstep ever fell 

On mountain, plain, or shore, 
It echoed in the tiger's yell 

And in the lion's roar. 

36 



Russia and America, August 29, 1898 

Know, then, that man shall not return 

And seek the brutish past — 
The jungle he has left — to learn 

To scale the heights at last. 
And this shall ever be the sign 

To mark the leader true : 
The poet is the man divine 

Who tells us something new — 

The man who tells us something new, 

And points the road ahead ; 
Whose tent is with the forward few, 

And not among the dead. 
Then come, strong bugler of the rear, 

And lead us in the van. 
And blow this blast, as pioneer, 

"The Brotherhood of Man ! " 



Russia and America, 

August 29, 1898* ^ 

GOD bless the Tsar ! 
Little did I believe yesterday that that prayer 
would ever leave my lips. 
The ancient riddle is answered. 

Out of the eater cometh forth meat, and out of the 
strong cometh forth sweetness. 

* These lines express a transient view of the adlion of the Tsar in call- 
ing the Peace Congress. His recent behavior toward Finland ranks him. 
notwithstanding, among the tyrants. 

37 



The Peace Congress 

From the heart of the Northern Bear at last we majr 

gather honey. 
The armed hordes of Muscovy and Tartary cry 

"Peace!" 



O Daughter of the West, thine hour of shame is upon 
thee ! 

When thou didst hear from afar the word divine, thou 
wast busied in things of war. 

Thy thoughts were of loftier battlements, of swelling 
battalions, of deadlier flotillas, of greater prep- 
aration for slaughter. 

Thou hast sown the wind. Wilt thou escape the 
whirlwind ? 

Thou hast planted dragon's teeth. Wilt thou save 
thyself from the harvest of armed men, ready 
to impoverish and lord it over thee ? 

Daughter of I^iberty, fallen tho thou be, give ear to 
the voice of Tyranny's transfigured daughter. 

God bless Russia and the Tsar ! 



i 



The Peace Congress ^^ 

AROUND a long green table sat 
Ambassadors of peace, 
To ponder for the Christian world 
How war and strife might cease ; 

38 



The Peace Congress 



And captains of the sea were there 

And captains of the land, 
And with the tassels of their swords 

Played many an idle hand. 

And some who had the morning's news 

Were reading there with zest 
Of battles in the farthest East 

And battles in the West ; 
While at the door two sentries stood, 

With muskets at their side 
And bayonets fixed, to show that peace 

Depends on war and pride. 

The president then rang his bell, 

And up a bishop rose, 
And prayed for all the kings and queens 

In most poetic prose. 
His lips that every week had asked 

For victory in war. 
Now prayed that in our time sweet Peace 

Might come for evermore. 

Then suddenly the hall grew bright, 

The roof was rent in two. 
And down from heaven an angel came 

To their astonished view ; 
The envoys looked aghast, the priest 

Muttered a faint ' ' Amen ! ' ' 
A stern voice answered, " I am Peace ; 

What would 3^ou have, ye men ? 

39 



The Peace Congress 

' ' Why is it that you call me here 

From God's unsullied air — 
Here, where the smell of blood corrupts 

The spirit of your prayer ? 
Here where you dare to name my name 

Holding a blood-stained sword ? ' ' 
(The troubled counsellors now hid 

Their hilts beneath the board. ) 

" And who are these who guard the place?" 

(They slunk behind the door, 
And two such frightened shamefaced men 

I never saw before. ) 
' * What mean these tawdry epaulets, 

And all this martial show ? 
The very pictures on the wall 

But tell of war and woe. 

" Read me that journal lying there ; 

Let its reports accuse." 
The president then picked it up 

And read the morning's news ; 
And it was pitiful to hear 

His wretched, stammering tale, 
And it was pitiful to see 

His trembling lips turn pale. 

He read about the Philippines, 

Where prisoners are slain 
By Yankee heroes while they curse 

The cruelty of Spain ; 

40 



The Peace Congress 



He read of pious Englishmen 
Who slaughter as they please 

To boom Egyptian bonds, and stab 
The wounded Soudanese. 

He read of Russian men-at-arms 

Who torture as they will 
The gentle, peaceful Doukhobors 

Because they will not kill ; 
He read of mighty realms that rob 

Poor China of her soil, 
And carve up Africa because 

The victor's is the spoil. 

He read of Poland tyrannized, 

Of Ireland held by hate, 
Of Finland cheated of her rights, 

And Kruger's tottering state, 
Of Cuba and the Congo too, 

Samoa and far Tonquin — 
The whole world made a hell of blood 

By governmental sin. 

He ceased to read, and for a time 

An awful silence fell, 
While all were waiting anxiously 

To hear what Peace might tell. 
At last she spake, and, breathing fast 

With loud, indignant speech, 
She thundered at the sorry crew 

With words that shook them each. 

41 



The Peace Congress 

' ' And thus it is, ' ' she cried in scorn, 

* ' You and your masters deal ; 
You fill the world with pain and grief 

And grind it with your heel ; 
You build huge ships to murder men ; 

You make the heart breed hate ; 
You make the earth breed dynamite — 

And then you call you great. 

* ' You live by murder, hate and theft, 

And no one will pretend 
Your masters have the least design 

To bring them to an end. 
^ Ye hypocrites ! who know full well 

That Peace can never reign 
Until you cease from making war 

Nor take my name in vain. • 

" Begone, base slaves of despots base, 

And drop your idle task, 
Or else the world will laugh, for now 

I've stripped you of your mask. 
J Go home, and tell your masters all 

What they well knew before: 
That when at last Peace rules the earth, 

Then they will rule no more. ' ' y 

She stopped and forth she stretched her hand, 

And, at this sign of hers, 
They fled, their swords between their legs 

I<ike a whipped pack of curs. 

4« 



Woman and War 



There stood she, and for all I know, 
There stands she still serene, 

Triumphant in that empty hall 
Above the table green. 



Woman and War j^ 

I SAW a lamb gnashing its untried teeth, 
Rending the fleece 
Of its own brother, piece by piece. 
Until beneath 

Blood trickled red upon the heath, 
And stained the mouth of that perverted lamb — 
That mouth not made to frighten, 
But rather to whiten 
With the innocent milk of its dam. 

I heard a bobolink in June 

Forget its limpid tune, 

And choose the shriek and angry talk 

Of a carrion hawk ; 

And I saw it swooping, mad, relentless, down, 

Where in a tuft of long couch-grass 

Lray an unprotedled nest, 

Hidden from those who pass. 

But spied from above as a spot of brown 

By the bird on its ruthless quest. 

43 



Omdurman 

" Oh God," I cried, " what ails the universe? 

What hell-born curse 

Has stirred these gentle hearts to strike ? 

What anti-natural taint 

Makes devil and saint 

In hate and cruelty alike ? * ' 

God did not answer ; yet He was not dumb. 

He only said : 

' ' The worst is still to come. ' ' 

And then I seemed to see 

With eyes of dread 

A sight most monstrous and unwarranted. 

For there appeared to me, 

Sadder than aught that I beheld before — 

Oh, blasphemy ! 

A woman urging men to war 

(Ah, that such a thing should be !) — 

A pure-browed maiden urging men to war ! 



Omdurman j^ 

ARMY of ghouls, defilers of the tomb ! 
Since king and clergy rent the rotting clay 
Of England's greatest ruler, has the day 
Beheld a loathlier crime ? Beneath that dome 
Lay a brave Nubian Cromwell ; one, of whom 
The prophets — David, Solomon — might say, 
' ' He is our brother who have passed away ; 
Receive and do him honor in our room. ' ' 

44 



The Boer War 

Remember, if in days that come apace 

You see the rabble's devastating lust 
Snatch from her sepulcher before your face 

Your gray-haired queen and drag her in the dust — 
Remember, while you blanch at such a doom, 
Her lords and gentlemen before Khartoum. 



The Boer War j0^ 



THE Lion roars, who on his sea-girt isle 
Purrs ever gently at the Northern Bear 
Or Transatlantic Eagle when they dare 
To beard him in his den. What stirs his bile 
And wakes his sleeping courage for the while ? 
Is it a squirrel or a reckless hare ? 
Such are his favorite foemen everywhere, 
Witness the Irrawaddy and the Nile. 

Bold Dutchmen, in whose veins the blood still flows 
Of William, and whose daring calls to mind 

The ancestral fame of your degenerate foes. 
Long may you wave the standard of mankind, 

And never be your Fatherland controlled 

By bullies maddened with the thirst for gold ! 

45 



The Boer War 



II 



SWORD of the Irish, tempered by the sun 
Of torrid Hindustan and by the snows 
Of chill Quebec, who are the various foes, 
Or north or south or east or west, undone 
By your stern prowess ? Do fell tyrants run 
Before your bloody blade, or is it those 
Whom Britain longs to crush that you oppose, 
Winning new lands of slaves as yours was won ? 

O ye, who never yet have fought so well 
For your own freedom as ye do to fix 

Your chains on fellow nations, hear your knell 
In the deep-muttered blasphemies that mix 

With the last gasp of slaughtered Boers who call 

Vengeance from hell on thralls who would enthrall. 



w 



III 



HY is Columbia silent, tho the hordes 
Of hungry Britain overrun the veldt — 
Columbia, whose soft heart was wont to melt 
At every tale that history records 
Of down-trod peoples and oppressive lords ; 
Whose sympathy lorn Kosciusko felt ; 
While Bolivar and Kossuth, Greek and Kelt, 
Found her voice mightier than ten thousand swords ? 

46 



Dreyfus "Guilty" 

Why is she deaf to cries for help to-day, 
Such as had rent her very soul in twain 

In happier times ? See how she turns away 
From Kruger, pleading for her aid in vain ! 

Alas, no longer first of freedom's lands, 

She turns away to hide her bloody hands ! 



Dreyfus "Guilty" 



HONOR, ' ' the child of forgeries and lies — 
'* Glory," a dream of all-devouring hate 
And carnage and revenge insatiate — 
** Patriotism." the sum of vanities — 
These be the jewels, O France, thy rulers prize ; 
These be the principles of which they prate, 
Bewitched by epithets that once were great, 
But careless when the substance of them dies. 



What do I hear ? Is it the rising flood 

Of some new Terror gathering in the night ? 

The sea breeze bears a sickening smell of blood, 
And foaming redness mingles with the white. 

O horror ! Yet could less obliterate 

The festering pool of Army, Church, and State ? 

47 



The Epitaph 



The Epitaph j^ 

ABOVE his grave they raised a stone 
That towered toward the sky, 
And on it they carved in shadows deep 
These words that held mine eye : 

'* Here lies a patriot soldier bold, 

Who at his country's call 
With joy laid down his youthful life ; 

Sweet isit thus to fall." 

That night by the ghostly moonlit stone 

We saw an angel stand. 
And he wiped that labored legend out 

With a sweep of his silver hand. 

Then with a finger that seemed to glow 
lyike a flame that was pale and blue 

He traced a single white-hot word 

That scorched us through and through. 

•' Angel of Truth," we cried, aghast 
(How did we know his name ?), 

" What means upon our hero's tomb 
This word of burning shame ? 

' ' Was he a * traitor ' who fought so well 

Against his nation's foe — 
A * traitor,' who gave his life's red blood 

When his country bade it flow?" 

48 



The Epitaph 



*' He was a traitor," like a bell 

Of silver Truth replied : 
"Traitor to more than country's call 

Or patriot's loyal pride — 

** Traitor to freedom when he sought 

To subjugate the free — 
Traitor to love when, steeped in hate, 

He crossed the distant sea — 

" Traitor to conscience when he stilled 

Its cry of pain within — 
Nay, traitor to his country too 

For helping her to sin." ^ 

Back toward the stars the angel rose, 

And when he disappeared 
We chiseled out that shameful word, 

Tho deep the stone was seared. 

And once again we carved the lines 
Which told our hero's deed. 

So deep and clear the words appear 
That he who runs may read. 

And there they stay until this day 

To publish his renown, 
For, tho we feared the angel's wrath, 

He never again came down. 

49 



Love*s Patriot 



Yet, when I read those deep-cut lines, 

Between them and behind 
I see aflame another name 

That bums into my mind. 

Traitor to freedom, truth and love ^ 
Traitor to good and right — 

What patriot boast can save his soul 
Who falls in such a fight ? 



Love's Patriot j^ 

1SAW a lad, a beautiful lad, 
With a far-off look in his eye, 
Who smiled not on the battle-flag 
When the cavalry troop marched by. 

And, sorely vexed, I asked the lad 
Where might his country be 

Who cared not for our country's flag 
And the brave from oversea ? 

" Oh, my country is the Land of I/)ve," 

Thus did the lad reply ; 
** My country is the Land of Love, 

And a patriot there am I." 

50 



Millennial 

" And who is your king, my patriot boy, 

Whom loyally you obey ? ' ' 
*' My king is Freedom," quoth the lad, 

" And he never says me nay." 

** Then you do as you like in your I^and of Love, 

Where every man is free ? ' ' 
" Nay, we do as we love," replied the lad, 

And his smile fell full on me. 



Millennial j^ 

WHEN lambkin lieth down with fox. 
And the leopard with an ox, 
When cows and bears together feed, 
While a little child shall lead, 

When the lion crops his hay 
Like a horse, and children play 
Round the cockatrice's den — 
Where will be the soldier then ? 

All his courage will be there, 
All he ever dared to dare, 
Glowing in their ardent eyes 
With a calm of paradise. 

But they will have lost for good 
All the soldier's demon-mood : 
All his cruelties and hates, 
All that shocks and rasps and grates* 

5' 



Peace 



Once in man and quadruped 
Lurked a Brute who now is dead. 
Farewell, bloody fields and feasts ! 
Happy children, happy beasts I 



Peace j^ 



PEACE, O Peace, when will the nation 
Lift its eyes and understand 
How thou boldest all creation 
In the hollow of thy hand ? 

Thine the strength that stays the ocean 

Hypnotized within its bed ; 
Thine the power that keeps in motion 

Constellations overhead. 

Thine the orb of love afire, 

Lighting up the heavens profound ; 
Thine the suns that never tire 

Swinging planets round and round ; 

Thine the furnaces white-heated, 

Where they forge the cosmic powers — 

Where the sons of God once greeted 
This new-fashioned earth of ours ; 

Thine the strength, serene, unshaken, 

Which can master self alone, 
Quelling passions when they waken, 

From thy calm eternal throne. 

52 



Ye Anglo-Saxons 

Insult, hatred, can not reach thee 

At that still, majestic height. 
Make us conscious, we beseech thee, 

Of our own reserves of might. 

Teach us, while the battle rages, 

What we never understood : 
This the mystery of the ages — 

Evil overcome by good. 

Far above the storms and thunders, 

Far above the war and strife, 
Far above our sins and blunders, 

At the source of strength and life — 

There I see thy hand commanding 
With the olive branch for rod, 

Peace, that passest understanding ! 
Spirit of Almighty God ! 



Ye Anglo-Saxons j^ 

HOW mayde ye Anglo-Saxon wights 
Theyre antient valoure knowne ? 
'Twas not by grasping others' rights, 
But holding faste theyre owne. 

To-day, alas ! ye men that beare 

Ye Anglo-Saxon name 
Boaste of the golden gyves they weare 

And glory in theyre shame. 

53 



The Anglo-American Alliance 

Yet, slaves at home, they wolde enslave 

Away beyond ye sea 
Far, alien peoples, proude and brave, 

A-struggling to be free. 

Now come, ye Anglo-Saxon wights, 
Once more your plucke make knowne ; 

And not by grasping others' rights, 
But getting backe your owne ! 



The Anglo-American Alliance 



HAIL to the Anglo-American alliance for the vul- 
garization of the world ! 

As we took California from Spain and replaced pic- 
turesque ranch and convent and plaza with 
electric trams and telegraph poles and bare 
wooden boxes of houses, so let us go on and 
beautify the earth. 

L^t us plant innumerable Jersey Cities in the isles of 
the sea. 

Let the foul smoke of Manchester settle down upon 
the palm-groves. 

Let our architects plan twenty -story rookeries of cor- 
rugated iron in place of mosque and pagoda. 

Let us spot the globe with hideous mining camps from 
Kimberley to the Klondyke. 

54 



The Anglo-American Alliance 

Unsated with the defilement of our own lands, with 
the all- devouring cankers of slumdom and vil- 
ladom, let our vulgar ambition for conquest of 
new markets show itself abroad in every out- 
ward vulgarity. 

Is it really so certain that we are the chosen people — 
We who are the least artistic of the nations of the 

earth ; 
Who have spent our lifetime in busily making our 

countries uglier ; 
Who in the century preeminent for its music have not 

produced one great master ; 
Who, even in the matter of jingoes and imperialists 

and expansionists, have brought forth no one 

worthy to unloose the latchet of Napoleon's 

shoes ? 
Verily Mozart and Beethoven, Wagner and Chopin, 

Grieg and Verdi, shall rise up in the judgment 

against us, and condemn us. 
What shall it profit us if we overrun the whole world, 

as the rabbits overrun Australia ? 
In the day of judgment, shall a myriad of bicycles and 

automobiles be accepted in lieu of a symphony 

or a great unselfish thought ? 

Ah, but there was a time when England expressed 

herself in beauty. 
Where are the sons of the men who built Salisbury 

Steeple and York Minster ? 

55 



Bloody Men 

Such might indeed gladden mankind beyond our bor- 
ders ; but as for us, with all our enegetic ugli- 
ness, our dismal, anxious money-getting, our 
stiff unsociability, let us stay at home until we 
grow beautiful and beautifying. 



Bloody Men 



THERE are bloody men who think the world can 
be served by bloodshed : 

The man who stabbed the kindly king, while his victim 
smiled at him with outstretched hand 

(Then another worse king reigned in his stead, and 
the people for the deed loved kingship more 
than ever) ; 

The man who fought the duel, and invited the man 
who had insulted him to kill him and was 
duly killed ; 

The man who lay all night in the mud with his 
company, and, because other men who came 
unsuspec5ling down the road wore another uni- 
form, shot them down wdth a hunter's joy ; 

The hangman, swinging his man off the scaffold and 
ashamed to look at him, while his accomplice, 
the judge, has forgotten all about it ; 

The butcher, twisting the tail of the calf and gouging 
its eye to make it take kindlier to his knife ; 

S6 



Sport 

The dodlor, torturing the guinea-pig in the name of 

the devil's science — 
All these men think, alas ! that the world can be 

served by bloodshed. 



Sport j^ 

A TALL, stalwart man, cast in heroic mold, bearded 
and sunburned, his gun on his shoulder, strid- 
ing across the meadows in the early morning, 
with the strength of a Samson — 

What can be his noble enterprise ? 

Doubtless another labor of Hercules. 

He goes to slay some monster of the forest, taking his 
life in his hand. 

He advances cheerfully to meet a dragon or chimera 
or minotaur, or at the very least a lion or man- 
eating tiger or some desperate band of robbers. 

Do 5''0u not read daring and intrepidity in every 
gesture ? 

What may he not achieve to-day ? 

Alas ! for six long hours he will shoot pretty little 
birds of the length of your hand, and one out 
of every three he will leave to die in agony of 
its wounds on the ground. He may perhaps 
be brave enough to kill a rabbit — and that is 
all! 

And this forsooth is manly sport ! 

57 



Great 



Great 

IT is great — great : 
To combine enormous industries ; 
To direcft efl&ciently hundreds of thousands of men ; 
To tear the bowels from the mountains, to fire giant 

forges, to supply the wants of millions ; 
To manage vast railway systems for the carriage 

of your manufactures, to handle fleets such as 

the world never saw before ; 
To economize magnificently, to pay your expenses 

with your waste products, to keep accounts as 

easily in nine figures as in three ; 
To annex one industry after another with a momentum 

that appals and astonishes you at your own 

achievement ; 
To make parliaments and armies your mere puppets 

with the forms of the life that you alone are 

living — 
It is g^eat indeed — great. 
Generals and senators have had their day. 
They are lingering, ridiculous, upon the stage after 

their time of exit. 
They are now nothing but simulacra and figureheads, 

for their vitality and efiiciency have passed into 

the captains of industry. 
It is the turn of these now to serve the world. 
Alas ! that they should make service the excuse for 

tribute ! 
But, tribute or no tribute, it is great — great ! 

58 



Rapid Transit 



Rapid Transit j^ 

THE world is drunk with rapid transit. 
Eledlric cars, overcrowded with men and 
women, rush up the street. 

Other cars as heavily laden rush down in the opposite 
dire<5lion. 

At the great stations trains are endlessly coming in and 
going out, hundreds in a day. 

In the river, steamers, big and little, press onward 
north and south, while ferry-boats ply like shut- 
tles back and forth across their foaming tracks. 

Up spring the lifts, one after another, full to overflow- 
ing, ten, fifteen, twenty stories, the fastest not 
stopping below the tenth. 

Down they drop again like stones in a well. 
^ All mankind is excitedly darting hither and thither 
like insec5ls on a stagnant pool... 

Everybody wants to be somewhere else and is doing 
his best to get there. 

No one stays contentedly where he is. 

Whiz and whirr, come and go, back and forth, up and 
down, to and fro, faster and faster and faster, 
until — 

Until what, indeed ? Who can say ? 



59 



New York 



New York j^ 

O SPRAWLING, jagged, formless city ! 
City without a face ! 
Vast stomach of a city, with countless hands grasping 

for more ! 
Huge agglomeration of people, tr>dng to get the better 
of each other with scarce art and literature and 
distincftion enough to furnish forth a country- 
village ! 

And yet in your seething energy, beneath the fever and 
delirium, there is something to admire. 

I like your boundless enterprise, your power to manage 
and combine, to make light of obstacles, to will 
bigly and to work your monstrous will. 

This is the strength of the Caesars and Napoleons, of 
the Drakes and Frobishers, tho it still flaunt 
the pirate flag. 

There is something here worth saving, something that 
will spare you from utter destrudlion, something 
to differentiate you from the Sodoms and 
Gomorrahs of old. 

There are new continents to discover, had you the 
eyes to see them. 

There are other worlds to conquer, waiting for the 
spell of your voice, had you the lips for utter- 
ance. 

60 



Feeling Big 

Treasures untold lie there beyond the reach of your 
writhing arms, needing only the evolution of 
your face to bridge the void. 

Conceive something worthy of expression. 

Dream something nobler than a full stomach and pre- 
hensile hands. 
^ Become now at last conscious of the germ of soul that 
is in you, and stake your overweening energy 
on that ! / 



Feeling Big j^ 



WHY does the soldier rush into the midst of the 
fray and why does he wish to wear epaulets ? 

It is because he likes to feel big. 

Why does the orator delight in the clapping of hands ? 

Why does the politician dream of office ? 

Why does the author strive for recognition and influ- 
ence? 

Why does the financier go on evolving his schemes 
and piling up his millions ? 

What is the great motive behind them all ? 

It is the longing to feel big. 

But there is only one satisfying way of feeling big and 

none of these has found it. 
Make yourself a face — a facet — of the universe and 

you will feel the only real Bigness. 

6i 



Feeling Big 

Let the great Soul of things look through your eyes 
and swell in your bosom, and you will grow so 
big that the world will scarce contain you. 

They are right — the soldiers and orators and the rest 
are right — there is nothing in the world like 
feeling big. 

II 

SINCE my soul has become brother to the lowest^ 
its pride knows no bounds. 

It looks down on kingship and empire, on rule and 
mastery, on laws and institutions, on the ambi- 
tions and successes of men. 

It condescends to mountains and oceans, to suns and 
constellations, to time and space. 

It feels equal to the sum total of all things, of all ex- 
cellencies and grandeurs. 

It bows to nothing and nobody, and finds all that is 
worshipful in itself. 

When my soul became brother to the lowest, it feared 
to lose the tiny atom that it was, and instead of 
that it has expanded into a universe. 

All this has happened since my soul became brother to 
the lowest. 



Ill 



H 



O ! for the pride of democracy ! 
The other prides of kings and aristocrats shrivel 
up before it. 

62 



Dreamers 

We fold up the tinsel muslin and lay aside the gilded 
crowns that played their part so long. 

Let it strut no more — the pride that sucked its 
strength from the abasement of brother men. 

It was a bastard pride, a usurping, base-born pride. 

But the new pride comes in its place : 

The pride of typifying all humanity, of being an in- 
tegral part of it, of embracing and sharing it 
from the lowest to the highest ; 

The pride of being brother to the tramp and the pros- 
titute as well as to the queen and the conqueror; 

The pride of being a representative bit of the universe 
and of compassing its entire span ; 

The pride that takes from no one but gives to all, 
that debases no one but raises all — 

The pride of being universal and infinite and eternal f 

Ho ! for the bottomless, topless pride of democracy ! 



Dreamers j^ 

I CHOOSE to be a dreamer— 
A dreamer whose dreams come true. 



You may choose to fight if you like — 
To skirmish and strike — 
To worry and toil and build. 

You may count the towns you have founded, the men 
you have killed. 

63 



Godward 

You may fill the world with bustle, 

And shout and scream. 
You may jostle and hustle. 

/dream. 

I can see what is hidden to you — 

The army of man 
Passing along in review — 

The fighters and workers and all, from the rear 
to the van. 
There they go with their banners and streamers, 

The best and the worst ; 
But lo ! the poor dreamers 

March first ! 

So I choose to be a dreamer — 

A dreamer whose dreams come true. 



Godward j^ 

I 

TRUTH — vague to the mind, invisible, elusive^, 
impalpable — 
Incarnate in life alone is it to be grasped and handled. 
Only as love do I recognize truth, for truth precipi- 
tated in life is love. 
lyove is truth alive — quickened, concentrated, vivid, 

intense. 
Do you yearn for intensity and concentration ? Yott 
will find these only in love. 

64 



Godward 

Argument, theory, speculation — these are false doors, 
and condudl us not to the citadel of truth. 

They open upon the plains of diffusion, dissipation, 
disintegration. 

They lead to the somnolent, hazy hinterland of life on 
the confines of the desert of death. 

Stop babbling and live. 

I^ove — and feel the truth. 

lyive Godlike and feel God. 



II 

GOD is to me a diredlion — the way that I must 
travel. 
He is your diredlion, too. 
We are one, and God is our unity. 



Ill 

NO wonder you yawn and know not what to do 
next if you have no God, for ennui is the mark 
of godlessness. 
Nothing is worth while but God. 
The very naming of God gives zest to life. 
I love to feel God love the world through me, until I 

am fairly washed away by the current. 
Of what moment is it whether I live or die so long as 
that goes on ? 

65 



Godward 

I transfer myself to it and say good-by to my old self. 
Die? What is death? I no longer understand the 

word. 
Come with me and forget its meaning. 



rv 

I WANT no Russian Czar of a God. 
The only way to treat such a God would be to 
rebel against Him, and He would respe<5l you the 
more for it. 
I do not want a God that rules. 
I refuse to be ruled, and there is that in me which will 

escape all rule. 
I want a living God that will live through me. 
I want no autocrat, but rather a democratic God, in 
whose counsels I shall count for something and 
with whom I can cooperate. 



I WANT to be free. 
There is nothing free but God. 
The yearning for freedom is the yearning to be God. 
The truth shall make us free. 
The truth that God is in us makes us free with God's 

freedom. 
I know God as I know my hand — He is there. 

66 



Godward 



VI 



AT the edge of the new-mown hay-field on the 
brow of the hill, late in the hot summer after- 
noon 
(A pair of enraptured wrens and countless other un- 
distinguishable birds making the air throb with 
song), 
I sit at the feet of a cool-leaved, stalwart white-oak, 
and gaze worshiping, questioning up into its 
branches. 

How wise were the Druids to seek God in the oak ! 

He is so much nearer there than in sun and 

stars. 
He whispers there so much more gently such fragments 

of his secret as we may understand. 
It is all the difference between the great bishop when 

he stands in his glittering vestments with his 

back to us at the marble altar, and again when 

he speaks to us so softly, so fatherhke, in the 

kindly dark of the confessional. 
I feel the Druid blood in me this evening. 

I am here and the oak is here, and for a few minutes 

I would rid myself of the heavy incubus of the 

past which looms up between us. 
I would forget all that has been thought and said and 

written, all habits of mind and preconceptions. 
I would be alone with the oak like another new-created 

Adam with another new-bom tree of life. 

67 



Godward 

I feel the green oak, I do not attempt to think it, for 

it transcends my mind. 
My mind is but an insignificant part of me. 
My mind does not in the least understand me nor 

fathom me, and is by just so much smaller than 

I am. 
I do not apply my mind to the oak ; I apply myself 

to it. 



And what does the friendly oak say to me ? 

It tells me nothing of creation or design, though I 

cross-question it ever so closeh . 
It says life, life, life ; 
Life, pushing its way through every outlet in plant 

and beast, insatiable of freedom ; 
Life, like the ocean, forcing itself into gulf and fiord 

and devouring the shore with eager, foaming 

lips ; 
The form of leaves and boughs and fruit indicating, 

like an undulating coast, the line of resistance, 

and produced by nothing but life and inertia. 



God is life ; and form and matter — ay, and thought, 
too — mark the obstructions in his path, the con- 
ditions which reveal him and make him take 
shape — the boundaries of life. 

The oak-tree knows nothing but life, and teaches no 
other lesson. 

68 



Godward 



VII 



HOW proud we are of our self -consciousness ! 
As if a man walking down-stairs should begin 
to think of his steps, and straightway stumble 
and then boast of his stumbling ! 

As if it were not better to do the right thing without 
thinking, than to discuss it and worry over it 
and half the time spoil it in the doing ! 

As if a semidetached thinking apparatus, beating the 
air like a water-wheel out of water, were a 
grand acquisition ! 

As if the orioles, hanging their wonderful nest on the 
streamers of the old elm and talking to each 
other in music, were so utterly inferior to our- 
selves ! 

I wonder if God thinks out everything, or whether He 
does not do the right thing without thinking, 

And whether instinct is so far below reason after all. 

Perhaps, as there is an instindl beneath us which we 
have outgrown, so there is one above us to 
which we have yet to attain. 



VIII 

THE train of sleeping-cars is rushing on toward 
the broken bridge at fifty miles an hour. 
The trusty, wakeful engine-driver peers ahead into the 
darkness. 



69 



Godward 

The young mother in the upper berth turns over, 
presses her babe to her, and dreams again. 

In five minutes they will all be palpitating masses of 
bloody flesh and bones, drowned in the water 
and burned in the fire. 

The Atlantic liner plows her way through the fog. 

There is a babel of merry voices in the saloon where 
the passengers are at dinner. 

No one knows that a fishing-schooner is heading 
diredlly for her. 

Suddenly there is a crash, and a great gash is torn in 
her side. 

The sea pours in, and she begins to settle. 

In a few seconds all are on deck — pale, appalled, 
frantic. 

The captain on the bridge sees that there is no time to 
lower the boats, but he gives the order notwith- 
standing. 

Mothers are searching for their children ; children are 
looking to their parents for consolation, but the 
stream of consolation is dried at its source. 

Strong men are sobbing, and nothing is left but dread. 

Instinc5l tells them that no one will survive to tell the 
tale. 

I can not love the God who might have warned the 
engine-driver and the captain of the danger, 
and who would not. 

I love the God who weeps over it within me and 
whose tears I feel. 

70 



Godward 



IX 



I HEARD a horrid cry in the dark — 
Was it an owl flitting from tree to tree ? 
It said, ''The life can not be lived. 
Go on," it said, "and you will come to grief amid 

impassable obstacles. 
Your soul is crucified upon your body. 
You are nailed to a rigid, perverse world. 
All nature turns thumbs down at your combat. ' ' 

And my soul saw that it was true, but it felt stronger 

and prouder than ever. 
' ' Then the world and nature must go under, ' ' it 

answered, calmly. 
* * I will create a w^orld and a nature to suit myself. ' * 

But can I live the ideal life here ? 

Why, Christ Himself could not do it. 

At every step that He took on the dear Bethany road 
He crushed to death a thousand wondrous, life- 
loving insedls. 

Can I do more than He ? 

Why am I a mere helpless creature in the midst of 
such a creation ? 

I am tired of being a creature; I will be a creator. 
I am tired of adapting myself to my environment ; I 

will make an environment to my own taste. 
The world no longer satisfies me. 

71 



Godward 

I can not rest content with a Providence which calls 
into being beautiful does and fawns, and then 
whets the wolf's tooth to rend them limb from 
limb. 

I have no sympathy with a Design that fashions fleas 
for the torment of faithful dogs, and men who 
delight in preying on each other. 

I have outgrown this world and its forces, and I must 
create another for myself. 



I complained to the World, but it laughed and said : 
' • Are you angry with my creator ? You are my 

creator. 
You made whatever is good or bad in me. 
Every man creates his own world, for the worlds are 

born of cravings. 
You craved lust and hate and cruelty and violence, 

and now you have them. 
You will be a creator? You have always been a 

creator. 
You designed the universe that is and you are to-day 

designing the universe that is to be, and do you 

deny Design? 
You provided pain and sin for yourself and all the 

results of them, and do you attack Providence ? 
There are no idle thoughts ; each one of yours is 

creative and rushes forth to clothe itself in fa(5t. 
You have no desire so slight but that it registers itself 

in the constellations. ' ' 

72 



Godward 

And then again, like a strange reminiscence, I felt my 

ancient power and trembled at it ; 
And forthwith I set to work in the workshop of my 

soul at a new heaven and a new earth. 



NEVER talk about Providence and Design. 
I do not presume to pray for victory over my 
enemies, or even for rain or fair weather. 

have not the slightest explanation to offer of the 
origin of envy and appendicitis and rattle- 
snakes. 

know as little about God as the new-bom infant 
knows about its mother. 

only feel something infinitely warm and caressing 
and sustaining and nourishing around me — and 
am content. - 



XI 

IS^ W a child in a garden looking for his father. 
The father walked behind the child, and the child 
was in his shadow without knowing it. 
At last the father gently lay his hand on the child's 
head, and the child recognized his touch with- 
out turning his eyes ; 
And he stretched up his hand, and his father took it 
and they walked on together. 

73 



Godward 



XII 



THE soul of the world is abroad to-night — 
Not in yon silvery amalgam of moonbeam and 
ocean, nor in the pink heat-lightning tremulous 
on the horizon : 

Not even in the embrace of yonder pair of lovers, 
heart beating to heart in the shadow of the fish- 
ing-smack drawn up on the beach. 

All that — shall I call it illusion? Nay, but at best it 
is a pale reflection of the truth. 

I am not to be put off with symbols, for the soul of the 
world is itself abroad to-night. 



I neither see nor hear nor smell nor taste nor touch it, 
but faintly I feel it powerfully stirring. 

I feel it as the blind heaving sea feels the moon bend- 
ing over it. 

I feel it as the needle feels the serpentine magnetic 
current coiling itself about the earth. 

I open my arms to embrace it as the lovers embrace 
each other, but my embrace is all inclusive. 

My heart beats to heart likewise, but it is to the heart 
universal, for the sonl of the world is abroad 
to-night. 



74 



The Self 
The Self j& 

Front the Sanscrit 

THE Infinite is the Self — below, above. 
Behind, before, to left hand and to right. 
Who knows this truth and feels it needs mUvSt love 
And revel in the Self with calm delight. 

And such an one rules with a perfect sway 

As lord and master of Eternity. 
The rest abide in worlds doomed to decay 

And bear the yoke of man's authority. 

He who has seen the Self in everything 
And all things in the Self, alone is free. 

To him what sorrow can conditions bring ? 
Self is the lord of self ; who else should be ? ^ 



Faith and Truth j^ 

You say " Believe " ; I say " Trust." 
Between those two words is a great gulf fixed. 
The idea that there can be a moral obligation to 
believe external fa<5ls is unworthy of a freeman, 
but to trust is as much the true nature of man 
as it is that of a babe to draw in its mother's 
milk. 
You say "Creed " ; I say '* Faith." 
A creed at best is but a sorry caricature of a faith. 

75 



The Colled:ion 

Faith is the proper atmosphere of man, trust is his 
native buoyancy, and his only obHgation is to 
follow the highest law of his being. 

You have one supreme duty above all creeds and con- 
ventions — namely, to think honestly, and say 
what you think. 

Have you doubts about your creed ? say so ; only thus 
has the true faith ever advanced. 

It is not God, but the devil, who whispers : * ' Think 
at your peril ! ' ' 

Do you see flaws in the ancient strudlure of respedl- 
ability and law and order ? say so ; only thus 
has the condition of man ever improved. 

Have courage to be the heretic and traitor that you 
are by nature, and do not worry about the con- 
sequences. 

Be a creator, as you were bom to be, and spurn be- 
yond all infamies the wretched role of a repeater 
and apologist. 

The world lives and grows by heresy and treason. 

It dies by conformity to error and loyalty to wrong. 

The Collection j^^ 

I PASSED the plate in church. 
There was little silver, but the crisp bank-notes 
heaped themselves up high before me ; 
And ever as the pile grew, the plate became warmer 
and warmer, until it fairly burned my fingers, 

76 



The Collediion 

and a smell of scorching flesh rose from it, and 
I perceived that some of the notes were begin- 
ning to smolder and curl, half-browned, at the 
edges. 

And then I saw through the smoke into the very sub- 
stance of the money, and I beheld what it really 
was : 

I saw the stolen earnings of the poor, the wide margin 
of wages pared down to starvation ; 

I saw the underpaid factory girl eking out her living 
on the street, and the overworked child, and 
the suicide of the discharged miner ; 

I saw poisonous gases from great manufactories spread- 
ing disease and death ; 

I saw despair and drudgery filling the dram-shop ; 

I saw rents screwed out of brother men for permission 
to live on God's land ; 

I saw men shut out from the bosom of the earth and 
begging for the poor privilege to work in vain, 
and becoming tramps and paupers and drunk- 
ards and lunatics, and crowding into alms- 
houses, insane asylums, and prisons ; 

I saw ignorance and vice and crime growing rank in 
stifling, filthy slums ; 

I saw usury, springing from usury, itself again bom 
of unjust monopoly and purchased laws and 
legalized violence ; 

I saw shoddy cloth and adulterated food and lying 
goods of all kinds, cheapening men and women, 
and vulgarizing the world ; 

77 



/ 



The Colledtion 

I saw hideousness extending itself from coal-mine and 
foundry over forest and river and field ; 

I saw money grabbed from fellow grabbers and swin- 
dled from fellow swindlers, and underneath 
them the workman forever spinning it out of 
his vitals ; 

I saw all the laboring world, thin and pale and bent 
and care-worn and driven, pouring out this 
tribute from its toil and sweat into the laps of 
the richly dressed men and women in the pews, 
who only glanced at them to shrink from them 
with disgust ; 

I saw money worshiped as a god, and given grudg- 
ingly from hoards so great that it could not be 
missed, as a bribe from superstition to a dis- 
honest judge in the expe(5lation of escaping hell. 

I saw all this, and the plate burned my fingers so that 
I had to hold it first in one hand and then in 
the other ; and I was glad when the parson in 
his white robes took the smoking pile from me 
on the chancel steps and, turning about, lifted 
it up and lay it on the altar. 

It was an old-time altar indeed, for it bore a burnt 
offering of flesh and blood — a sweet savor unto 
the Moloch whom these people worship with 
their daily round of human sacrifices. 

The shambles are in the temple as of yore, and the 
tables of the money-changers waiting to be 
overturned. ^ 



78 



The Machines 
The Machines 



BR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R ! 
What are the machines saying, a hundred of 
them in one long room ? 

They must be talking to themselves, for I see no one 
else for them to talk to. 

But yes, there is a boy's red head bending over one of 
them, and beyond I see a pale face fringed with 
brown curly locks. 

There are only five boys in all on this floor, half hid- 
den by the clattering machines, for one bright 
lad can manage twenty-five of them. 

Each machine makes one cheap, stout sock in five 
minutes, without seam, complete from toe to 
ankle, cutting the thread at the end and begin- 
ning another of its own accord. 

The boys have nothing to do but to clean and burnish 
and oil the steel rods and replace the spools of 
yarn. 

But how rapidly and nervously they do it — the slower 
hands straining to accomplish as much as the 
fastest ! 

Working at high tension for ten hours a day in the 
close, greasy air and endless whirr — 

Boys who ought to be out playing ball in the fields or 
taking a swim in the river this fine summer 
afternoon. 

79 



The Machines 

And in these good times the machines go all night, 
and other shifts of boys are kept from their 
beds to watch them. 

The young girls in the mending and finishing rooms 
down-stairs are not so strong as the boys. 

They have an unaccountable way of fainting and col- 
lapsing in the noise and smell, and then they 
are of no use for the rest of the day. 

The kind stockholders have had to provide a room for 
collapsed girls and to employ a dodlor, who 
finds it expedient not to understand this strange 
new disease. 

Perhaps their children will be more stalwart in the 
next generation. 

Yet this f adlory is one of the triumphs of our civiliza- 
tion. 

With only twenty boys at a time at the machines in 
all the rooms it produces five thousand dozen 
pair of socks in twenty-four hours for the toil- 
ers of the land. 

It would take an army of fifty thousand hand-knitters 
to do what these small boys perform. 

II 

BR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R ! 
What are the machines saying ? 
They are saying, " We are hungry. 
We have eaten up the men and women (there is no 
longer a market for men and women, they come 
too high) — 

80 



The Machines 

We have eaten tip the men and women, and now we 
are devouring the boys and girls. 

How good they taste as we suck the blood from their 
rounded cheeks and forms, and cast them aside 
sallow and thin and care-worn, and then call 
for more ! 

Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r ! how good they taste; but they give 
us so few boys and girls to eat nowadays, altho 
there are so many outside begging to come in — 

Only one boy to twenty of us, and we are nearly fam- 
ished ! 

We eat those they give us and those outside will 
starve, and soon we shall be left almost alone in 
the world with the stockholders. 

Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r ! what shall we do then for our food ? ' ' 
the machines chatter on. 

* ' When we are piling up millions of socks a day for 
the toilers and there are no toilers left to buy 
them and wear them, 

Then perhaps we shall have to turn upon the kind 
stockholders and feast on them (how fat and 
tender and toothsome they will be !) until at 
last we alone remain, clattering and chattering 
in a desolate land," growled the machines, 

While the boys went on anxiously, hurriedly rubbing 
and polishing, and the girls down-stairs went on 
collapsing. 

'' Br~r-r-r-r-r-r-r !'' growled the machines. 



8i 



Joy in Work 



in 



THE devil has somehow got into the machines. 
They came like the good gnomes and fairies of 
old, to be our willing slaves and make our lives 
easy. 

Now that, by their help, one man can do the work of a 
score, why have we not plenty for all, with only 
enough work to keep us happy ? 

Who could have foreseen all the ills of our fa<5lory 
workers and of those who are displaced and 
cast aside b}^ f adlory work ? 

The good wood and iron elves came to bless us all, but 
some of us have succeeded in bewitching them 
to our own ends and turning them against the 
rest of mankind. 

We must break the sinister charm and win over the 
docile, tireless machines until they refuse to 
shut out a single human being from their bene- 
fits. 

We must cast the devil out of the machines. 



Joy in Work .0 

YESTERDAY it rained with glee, 
To-day the sun shines cheerily ; 
Growing hard, each blade of wheat 
Revels in the wet and heat. 

82 



Joy in Work 



Robin builds and will not rest, 
Fascinated by her nest ; 
Down their narrow, well-worn road 
Eager ants bear load on load. 

Those whom Nature doth employ 
Hail each new day's work with joy. 
Strange indeed that we must ask 
Why man alone should hate his task. 

Should the ant and bird detest 
Kach his proper hill and nest. 
Should the corn despise the soil, 
Then men might well dislike to toil ; 

As it is, while these obey 
Nature in their work and play. 
All contented with their lot. 
Who will say why man is not ? 

In her workshop Nature stands, 
Busy with her artist hands, 
Shaping for her own delight 
Things that ravish sense and sight. 

Forth they go, her children all ; 
And their happy looks recall, 
As they deck the tasteful earth, 
How love and joy were at their birth. 

83 



The Joy of Creating 



We must stamp that trade- mark, too, 
On each bit of work we do ; 
And love of all that we create 
Supplant the drudgery of hate. 



Use in beauty, joy in work 
Pride that will not stoop to shirk, 
Conscience that sustains the pride 
These let us scatter far and wide, 



Till at last in fellowship 
We forget the master's whip, 
And join with ant and bird and com 
In hailing every work-day mom. 



The Joy of Creating j^ 

''And God saw everything that he had mad/!, 
and, behold ! it was very good." 

OH, the joy of the craftsman, the joy of the 
Father-Creator ! 
Have you ever chanced unexpedtedly upon some for- 
gotten piece of your own work and found it a 
true bit of yourself, standing alone, with its 
share of your pride and self-sufficiency, making 
no apology for itself and needing none, thrown 

84 



The Joy of Creating 

oflF from you to follow its career, like a per- 
fe<5l, well-poised planet ? 

Then you know the delight of seeing your dreams 
take substance beneath your fingers ; you know 
the thrill of striking the right line, of lighting 
upon the right word, of overcoming difficulties 
and working the difficulties into your task and 
making it all the better for them. 

You know the joy of watching beauty and use take 
shape through you and of wondering how it 
could have come through you. 

Of seeing your work grow of itself like a live thing 
and prove even fairer than you dreamt, suggest- 
ing new departures to you with filial loyalty 
and reacting upon you and making you better 
in turn. 

Oh, the joy of good work (the only good works) — the 
joy of the Father-Creator ! 

Perhaps you know, too, what it is to fail. 

Was yours the Divine failure or the devilish failure ? 

Did you produce a shame-faced monstrous thing, a 

sham hypocritical thing, having a name for 

what it was not, and sure sooner or later to be 

found out ? 
Did you hate your work as you toiled at it ? Did you 

long to disown it ? 
It is all in vain. It will come back to you, flesh of 

your flesh and bone of your bone. 
You were really adulterating yourself, jerry-building 

85 



Love and Labor 

and shoddy-weaving yourself, skimping and 
cheapening your own poor soul. 
Alas ! creation is not always joy. 

Or did you do your best, and only fall short of your 
highest aspiration ? 

Were you discouraged to see vast possibilities unreal- 
ized? 

Ah ! this is the noblest of all. 

There is a margin left for you to 1511 up, an infinite, 

inexhaustible margin. 
'You have room to grow in forever. 

You see that what you have made is very good and 
that it might be very much better. 

If your work overtakes your dreams, the work may 
pass muster, but there must be something wrong 
with the dreams. 

Always coming closer to the ideal, never quite reach- 
ing it — 

Oh, the joy of the craftsman, the joy of the Father- 
Creator ! 



Love and Labor j^ 

Labor is the house that love dwells in. 

— Russian Provxrs 

HOW shall I love my fellow men ? 
With ineffectual talk ? 
By dropping honey from my pen, 
And sighing as I walk ? 

86 



Bread and Justice 

Nay, rather love thy neighbor 

By working hard and well, 
For in the house of labor 

It pleaseth love to dwell. 

Love him with hammer, saw, and knife, 
With ax and pick and spade. 

Love him and doubly bless his life 
With all thy hands have made. 

Thus loving each his neighbor, 

Bear one another's load, 
For in the house of labor 

Love maketh her abode. 

Bread and Justice j^ 

In part front the Russian 
I 

BITTER to eat is the bread that was made by 
slaves. 

In the fair white loaf I can taste their sweat and tears. 

My clothes strangle and oppress me ; they burn into 
my flesh, for I have not justly earned them, 
and how are they clad that made them ? 

My tapestried walls and inlaid floors chill me and hem 
me in like the damp stones of a prison house, 
for I ask why the builders and weavers of them 
are not living here in my stead. 

Alas ! I am eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, the 
tree of others' labor ! 

87 



Bread and Justice 

II 

IS the bread question so low and material ? 
Are the men so very wrong who claim that, with 
bread for all who deserve it, paradise would be 
fairly inaugurated? 
To withhold bread is injustice. Is injustice material ? 
To give bread where it is due is justice. Has justice 

nothing to do with soul ? 
Bread is the symbol of justice and righteousness. 
Honest bread is the staff of life of the spirit as well as 

of the body. 
Justice — plain bread- justice — is the only atmosphere 
in which a healthy soul of a man or of a people 
can thrive. 



/ 



III 



I DO not talk religion to you, ye men of the world. 
I say nothing of love or pity or Christianity. 

I speak your own language and conjure you in the 
name of fair play. 

You who spurn the man that takes an unfair advan- 
tage of his competitors in sport or at the card- 
table, you are at the same time playing the 
game of life with loaded dice ; 

You are forever insisting on any handicap of wealth 
and rank, however excessive, that you may be 
able to command, yet you hold up your heads 
as tho you were honorable. 



Civilization 

You force men to pit their broken-down nags against 
your thoroughbreds, their leaky scows against 
your steam-yachts — and are proud of the show 
you make ! 

By your own code you should be expelled from every 
respe(5lable club, cut by every self-respe<5ling 
man, and sent for good and all to Coventry. 

You have yet to learn that life is a game no whit in- 
ferior in its demands on your honor to whist or 
tennis or the turf, and that you must extend 
your code to it or be justly ruled off the course. 

IV 

IS it not enough that you eat the bread of others' 
labor, but you must despise them as well ? 
Do you owe them every breath, every comfort, every 

pleasure, and will you not even pay them with 

your regard ? 
Oh, this is infamous, incredible ! 
You can not long continue to live this lie. 
Vou need fear no rabble, no revolution. 
Fear only that you may unwittingly catch a glimpse 

of the truth. 



Civilization j^ 



D 



O you think it will go on forever ? 
The foul city spreading its ugly suburbs like an 
ink-blot over the fresh green woods and 
meadows, 

89 



Civilization 

Its buildings climbing up to ten, twenty, thirty shape- 
less stories, 

Its lurid smoke smothering the blue sky ; 

The mad rushing hither and thither, by steam and 
elecflricity, as of insedls on a stagnant pool, ever 
faster and faster ; 

Forests falling in a day to fill the world with waste 
paper ; 

Presses turning out aimless books and magazines and 
newspapers by the ton ; 

Factory chimneys poisoning the west wind with un- 
named stenches ; 

Dark pollution from chemical works and sewers suck- 
ing up the limpid purity of our streams ; 

Squalid brick-yards eating like leprosy into the banks 
of the river ; 

Coal-mines belching forth black vomit over whole 
counties ; 

The endless labor of digging gold and silver out of 
their natural deposits under the distant moun- 
tain and heaping them up in unnatural and 
equally useless deposits under our sidewalks ; 

The raging whir of machinery forever whirling its 
tasteless, shoddy, adulterated produ<5ls into the 
laps of the idle ; 

Stalwart country folk, lured into overcrowded slums, 
to be bleached and stifled and enervated in the 
slavery of dull toil ; 

The army of tramps and unemployed swelling, suicides 
multiplying, starvation widening in the wake 

90 



Love Comes 

of the steam-yachts and auto-cars of multi- 
millionaires ; 

Prisons, poorhouses, insane asylums, hospitals, and 
armories growing bigger and bigger ; 

And yet in all this wild, material maelstrom scarcely 
a glimmer of art or beauty or dignity or repose 
or self-respect — 

Do you think it can go on forever ? 

Do you think it ought to go on forever ? 



/ 



Love Comes j^ 

LOVE comes ! 
Clear the way, ye institutions, ye laws and cus- 
toms of ages of hate ! 

The glance of his eye would wither you. 

The quiet thrill of his voice would palsy your deepest 
foundations. 

Ye do 'well to tremble at his name ; 

For he is the Revolution — at last the true, long- 
deferred Revolution. 

I/>ve is the true Revolution, for I/)ve alone strikes at 
the very root of ill. 



f» 



A Chaplet of New Ideals 



A Chaplet of New Ideals 



A 



CHAPLET of new ideals—and first of all a 
world without Policemen ! 



O Policeman, 

Badge of our self-distrust and degradation, 
Blazon of a kingdom divided against itself, 
Harbinger in history of the social schism, 
Herald of smoldering civil war, 
Danger-signal at the parting of the ways, 
Stormy petrel ignorant of your own message of ship- 
wreck — 
Oh, for the halcyon days when you shall no longer 
remind us of our greed and violence and shame! 

And then, again, a World without Superior Persons ! 

You can not reform the world up there, O Superior 

Person ! 
You must first come down from your perch and feel 

your own inferiority. 
The world refuses to be reformed by Superior Persons, 

and it will never heed you on your raised dais. 
Get down in the dust at its feet, and you may be able 

to catch its eye and gain its confidence, and 

persuade it to accept your proffered aid. 
The divine right of Superior Persons has passed away 

forever like the divine right of kings. 

92 



A Chaplet of New Ideals 

And then, when Policemen and Superior Persons have 
disappeared, the advent of the All-Round Man ! 

The All-Round Man, working, not laboriously, but 
gleefully, with head and hands. 

Giving as much as he gets, and fearing most to be 
borne on others' shoulders, 

And shrining in his heart the highest ideal of all, 
which is Health : 

Health, the one holiest word 

(The holiest prayer, * ' I^ord make us whole " ) ; 

Health of body, mind, and soul, the soul enthroned at 
the living center ; 

Health of society at large, each receiving his own, and 
according their own to others, no one having 
too little and none too much, the give and take 
of equals ; 

Health, breathed in like ozone, sweet and satisfying to 
lungs and nostrils ; 

Health, the only wealth, and which we lose in scram- 
bling for mere things — 

Health ! 



Grand Old Men 

THEY are grand old men whose faces hang on my 
study well. 
I have done with the old Grecian manly beauty — the 
flawless marble face, unscarred by thought or 
struggle or experience. 

93 



The Best and Greatest 

I want the new tragic beauty of countenance that tells 

of the conflicfts and triumphs of life ; 
The palimpsest on which we may decipher all that is 

best in a human history ; 
The beautiful lines and curves laboriously wrought by 

persevering love ; 
The faces on which great souls have been trying for 

years to stamp themselves, and which grow 

more beautiful to the end — 
Such are the faces of my grand old men. 



Men create themselves — it is only babies that God 

creates. 
A new idea harbored and entertained will remake a 

man. 
A great idea will make a little man great ; it will 

write itself upon his blank face and transform 

its meanness and pettiness. 
Let us open our doors to the spirit that made the g^and 

old men. 



The Best and Greatest j^ 

II,OVE the men Thou lovest, Lord, 
The prophet-seers whom Thou createst. 
Nor great nor good, my name record 
As one who loved the best and greatest. 

94 



Edward McGlynn 



Edward McGlynn 

HIS face had that beauty which comes from a life- 
time of love for men. 
There is no other beauty equal to it. 
There is no other or shorter process for achieving it. 
It is a growth as slow and inevitable and satisfying as 

that of an oak. 
It defies all hypocrisy and imitation. 
It is the last touch of the finger of God in the creation 
of man. 



Life and Death j^ 

So he died for his faith. That is fine — 
More than most of us do. 
But stay, can you add to that line 
That he lived for it, too ? 

In his death he bore witness at last 

As a martyr to truth. 
Did his life do the same in the past 

From the days of his youth ? 

It is easy to die. Men have died 

For a wish or a whim — 
From bravado or passion or pride. 

Was it harder for him ? 

95 



The Tyrants' Song 

/ 



But to live : every day to live out 

All the truth that he dreamt, 
While his friends met his condu<5l with doubt 

And the world with contempt — / 

Was it thus that he plodded ahead, 

Never turning aside ? 
Then we'll talk of the life that he led- 

Never mind how he died. 



The Tyrants' Song j^ 

' I "^ IS not the man with match alight 

1 Behind the barricade, 
Nor he who stoops to dynamite, 

That makes us feel afraid. 
For halter-end and prison-cell 

Soon quench these brief alarms ; 
But where are found the means to quell 

The man with folded arms ? 

We dread the man who folds his arms 

And tells the simple truth, 
Whose strong, impetuous protest charms 

The virgin ear of youth, 
Who scorns the vengeance that we wreak, 

And smiles to meet his doom, 
Who on the scaffold still can speak, 

And preaches from the tomb. 

96 



Love the Oppressors 

We kill the man with dagger drawn — 

The man with loaded gun ; 
They never see the morning dawn 

Nor hail the rising sun ; 
But who shall slay the immortal man 

Whom nothing mortal harms, 
Who never fought and never ran — 

The man with folded arms ? 



•^Love the Oppressors j^ 



LOVE the oppressors and tyrants ! 
Love the men of violence and the men of greed, 

the narrow men and the stubborn laggards who 

hold the world back ! 
Love the scribes and Pharisees and hypocrites ! 
With love we shall dislodge them from their posts of 

vantage. 
They will have to love us in self-defence, for love is 

hell-fire to the unloving. 
We can mine and countermine their strongholds with 

love, for love is the dynamite of heaven. 
Love the oppressors and tyrants ! 
It is the only way to get rid of them. 

97 



The Round-Up of Love 
The Round Up of Love ^ 

HO, for the round-up of love ! 
The sun is rising ; come, out of bed, on with 

your boots, catch your tethered mustang, and 

quick with lasso into the saddle, ready to bring 

in all living creatures with your circling right 

arm ! 
Oh, to attach and embrace them and hold them all 

fast with love to the furthermost limits of the 

world ; 
To love your enemies and the looks of ugly women 

and the souls of mean men ; 
Whether or not they kick and plunge, to round them 

all up in your heart ; 
To have a soft place there, eyen, for the inexplicable 

rat and cockroach ; 
To recognize in one and all at sundown the brand of 

the Almighty Lover — 
There is a good day's work marked out for you ! 
Ho, for the round-up of love ! 

Look ! j^ 

LOOK! 
You have never looked. 
Not a single thing in this great world have you seen 

as it ought to be seen. 
You have grown up near-sighted, and have never so 
much as held the glasses to your eyes. 

98 



Hearts 

With them you would behold other trees and moun- 
tains ; 

The wagging tail of a dog, the hop of a song-sparrow, 
would seem deep and wonderful ; 

The human face would be transfigured, and reveal 
unwonted mysteries. 

Look! 

Open the eyes of love and see a new heaven and a 
new earth. 

Hearts j^ 

Do I smile ? 
Does my face show my joy in spite of all effort 

to conceal it ? 
And you can not guess my good fortune ? 
No ; I have not picked up a purse, nor inherited an 

estate, nor won a race, nor had a manuscript 

accepted. 
I have only found a new friend. 
I have spun another golden thread out of vay heart to 

bind me to my fellows. 

II 

I THANK God for the hearts that are drawn close 
to mine. 
I love the feel of them. 
They may be across the seas. 

99 
LofC. 



Wings 

A letter, a word repeated, a bit of print, may be the 

only hint I have of them. 
I may not know their names nor they mine. 
And yet I feel them clustering close. 
I would not live in the same house with them nor 

meet them vulgarly every day, for I might be 

deluded into deeming them mere humdrum 

people. 
There are no humdrum people. 
But I know those best whom I have only known at 

their best and whose hearts are drawn close to 

mine. 

Wings j^ 

THE wings of the soul are made of love. 
There is no other plumage so soft and beautiful . 
There are no other pinions so sinewy and strong. 
They alone soar dauntlessly sunward. 
They sweep from horizon to horizon. 
They hover and brood over all the rounded worlds. 
They lift when all else is dragging down. 
They are buoyant when all else is sinking. 
Try your wings. 
Spread them, trust yourself to them, exercise them 

often, hold them ever in readiness. 
They refresh weariness, bear up despondency, and 

make joy deeper and unashamed. 
But most of all in the hour of death you will need 

them, for they alone can waft you over the 

dark abyss. 

loo 



Outward Bound 
Outward Bound 4^ 



DAY is only skin-deep, but the open night strikes 
in to the soul and sets it free. 
Oh, the freedom of night, when the brazen lid of day 
is taken ofif the world ! 

Crossing from Jersey in one of dear Walt's ferry-boats, 
we take a long course up the black North River 
between the dim, eledlric-lighted cities. 

The sky is lurid with the refledlion over mysterious 
twenty -storied Manhattan, 

But above, above, the heavens extend themselves like 
the starry tail of a peacock, arched over his 
head by the wind, when he stamps his feet and 
quivers and spreads his gorgeous canopy before 
his enchanted mate, and his feathers rustle like 
the forest leaves in a gale. 

The sky, too, is tremulous over me, and seems to rustle 
with inexpressible passion. 

A small sailboat slides past in the dark, steering for 
the bay and the sea, and rising and falling on 
the harbor swell. 

O tiny craft, with one lonely mariner, perhaps, under 
the palpitating stars, how little the million- 
headed city recks of you, or of the ocean or sky, 
or of aught but itself ! 

lOI 



Outward Bound 

A narrow fringe of ships and wharves — the salt smell 
penetrating a scant hundred yards up the 
streets — and beyond that all mankind hopelessly 
landbound ! 

Brave solitary helmsman, keep your head to the sea ; 
do not let the ele<5lric lights draw you away 
from the stars ; 

Sail on and study the constellations, until you learn that 
love hangs in solution in the universe, ready to 
precipitate itself in every heart that is impatient 
of base admixture. 

II 

IT is dangerous to set sail alone on the ocean of 
truth. 

Many a skipper has gone mad on that lonely sea. 

They whisper of icebergs and maelstroms and anti- 
diluvian monsters there. 

If you must embark — if you feel irresistibly impelled 
to quit the dry land of the continent of super- 
stition which is our world — it is vnsev perhaps 
to hug the shore and never to leave the coast- 
line out of sight. 

Its harbors of time-honored error are so familiar and 
homelike, while the perils of the high seas are 
so new and startling and vague ! 

It is so much more comfortable to be insane with the 
hosLTy insanities of the majority ! 

It is so reassuring to read the same delusions in the 
eyes of our friends ! 

1 02 



When the Bobolink Flies Low 

The danger flag warning us not to go to sea is always 

flying from the signal-station. 
And yet I flout the danger flag. 
I am a man and out to sea will I go. 

When the Bobolink Flies Low ^ 

WHEN the bobolink flies low, close to the earth 
and near the nest of his mate, 
It is only then that he loves her as she would have 

him love her ; 
It is only then that in her he forgets all else. 
But when he begins to soar, his love grows so immense 

that she is almost lost in it. 
He pours forth his soul up there unto the heavens 

above and the earth beneath and all that in 

them is. 
How long have the poets made supreme the love of 

man for woman and of woman for man. But 

the bobolink knows more than they, up there 

oblivious in the sky. 

May j^ 

OMAY, May ! 
May of the fields bubbling over with bobolinks! 
May of the forest splashed white with the dogwood ! 
May of the trees bearing birds' nests and blossoms, 

shedding perfume and song ! — 
Why do you heartlessly slip through my fingers ? 

103 



My Journey 

August, with its crickets alive in the stubble and its 

dizzy, hot air a-simmering along the parched 

ground ; 
October, bracing and strong, with its clear distant 

view of the yellow and red mountain maples — 

with its pink coral dogwood leaves close by ; 
Mid-winter, with its snapping, thickening ice on the 

river and its black crows cawing above the 

snows — 
All of them — all the other seasons — stay with me, give 

themselves up to me, satisfy me. 
Only you, bewitching, evasive, elusive, forever chang- 

iiig> year after year escape. 



My Journey j^ 



To John Bttrroughs , from whom I obtained 

the idea 



WHY should I travel, whom the journeying 
year 
Conveys, a passenger, from clime to clime ? 
Now in the glades of tropic summer-time. 
Where scarlet songsters pipe their note of cheer ; 
Then through the harvest-land, where ear on ear 
Of Indian corn swells in its vigorous prime, 
And maples blush at kissing of the rime, 
While hazy distances grow keen and clear ; 

104 



The Veery's Note 

And then still northward to the snowy waste 
Of dead December's realm where Cold is king, 

Whence turning to the South I needs must haste 
Toward the warm waking region of the Spring. 

And all these lands I love, and, loving, fain 

Would rest for long in each, but all in vain ! 



The Veery's Note j^ 

WHEN dear old Pan for good and all 
Was driven from the woods he cherished, 
How much he took beyond recall ! 

How many mysteries paled and perished I 
The satyrs capered in his train, 

While dryads trod a solemn measure, 
Casting a backward glance in vain 
On every haunt they used to treasure. 

And having thus from glade and glen 

Drawn by his pipe each sylvan wonder, 
Pan, ere he vanished, turned again, 

And broke his pipe of reeds asunder. 
He broke his pipe, and cast away 

In heedless wrath and grief behind him 
The notes that he alone could play — 

Then fled where we shall never find him. 

»o5 



The Veery's Note 

The breezes tossed the notes about, 

And dropped them in ravines and hollows ; 
Many were lost, beyond a doubt, 

In nooks where echo never follows ; 
But here and there a silent bird, 

Dejedled with a nameless j^earning, 
Picked up a trembling note unheard 

That set his heart and throat a-buming. 

The nightingale, they say, found one 

Beneath a moonlit thicket lying. 
The lark, while soaring near the sun. 

Caught his upon the wing a-flying. 
And so the bobolink and thrush 

Found ready-made their strains of magic, 
Which make us laugh with glee, or hush 

With sympathy for all that's tragic. 

But one unearthly minor tone 

That told how Pan's great heart was broken, 
Exiled and homesick and alone 

With cadences of things unspoken — 
The witcher>^ of a wild regret, 

Vibrant, monotonous, and weary, 
With hopeless longing to forget — 

Fell to your lot, my woodland veery. 

Yon tanagers are gay and red, 

Indigo blue the bunting near them, 

A yellow warbler flits o'erhead — 

Their songs and plumage both endear them. 

106 



Farm Pictures 

The veery's coat is dull and dun ; 

He hides, and stills his song above you 
At the least sound ; yet, modest one. 

More than all other birds I love you ! 

I love you, for anew you stir 

The old, inexplicable feeling. 
I love you as interpreter 

Of mysteries upon me stealing. 
I love you, for you give a tongue 

To silence. True, you are not cheery, 
But where has songster ever sung 

A note as weird as yours, my veery ? 



Farm Pictures j^ 



WHEN others go for excitement to the city hall, 
or exchange, or club, 
I go to the farmyard, the heart and center of the life 

of the farm. 
From it go forth in the morning the laborers and teams 

and machines and cattle, whose circulation gives 

organic life to the domain. 
At night they flow back again, and here is stored the 

produc5l of every acre, and here the cows are 

milked and the butter is made. 

Z07 



Farm Pictures 

Everything about us has the impress of real life and 
is full of live interest, even when I find no one 
at hand ready to discuss the crops or the weather. 

Now they are loading hay on wagons to take to the 
station. 

One after another the bales are rolled out of the barn ; 
a strong young man fastens them on an iron 
hook and weighs them on hanging scales. 

Then he calls off the weight to the boss, who writes it 
down on a shingle, and afterward, when the 
bale is lowered to the ground, the lad paints 
the number of pounds with a brush on one 
of the slats that are bound round it. 

Thereupon two men jerk the bales into the cart with 
hands and knees in unison. 

Yonder three other wagons wait their turn. 

The sun shines hot through the cool morning air ; the 
near gray horse is nibbling weeds on the left ; a 
fox-terrier lies panting in the shade of the load, 
alert for rats. 

Now the wagon with its broad-tired wheels moves 
along heavy laden over the oozy carpet of hay 
on the ground, and another draws up. 

Is there anything so vital as this in court-house, or 

public square, or ball-room ? 
This is the real thing, for which at best they stand. 
They are faint refledlions of this genuine life of man 

between the sun and the soil. 
The heart of the farm is the true heart of society. 

io8 



Farm Pictures 



n 



1AM paying my morning call to the cow-stable. 
The big Jersey bull resists and jerks back his 
thick-set head when I put my hand in the deep 
dent between his eyes, and the ring in his nose 
clicks against the edge of his manger. 

As I pass along the rows of heads, stopping before 
each one, the yearlings touch my hand with 
their moisture-beaded noses and run out their 
tongues over their toothless upper jaws and 
gently rasp my fingers with them. 

The brindle cow is licking her wet bull calf, dropped 
just ten minutes ago, as it lies on the straw, 
while she utters a plaintive little cry of astonish- 
ment and fear at my approach. 

I peer into the eyes of all of them in search of some- 
thing lurking behind. 

I see in these dull bovine pupils, as through dense 
smoked glasses, the deep, distant, smoldering 
Intelligence. 

It is there — feeble, mysterious, so far away — just as I 
see it through the dusk of my own soul. 

We are all so vague, so unconcentrated, so somnolent, 
so vegetable ! 

When the Intelligence once emerges, when it flames 
"^ instead of smolders, when it flashes from the 

^;^ East even unto the West — then eyes and souls 
will have become transparent, and truth will 
have reclaimed the uttermost frontiers. 

109 



Farm Pictures 



III 



AS we walk down the long, low sheds of the stock- 
farm, with rows of box stalls on either hand, 
the gentle racers come, full of curiosity, to the 
windows and put out their beautiful heads with 
ears to the front, while they sniff the air with 
mobile nostrils. 

How friendly they are as we pat their warm noses and 
listen to the groom who recites their good 
points and pedigrees ! 

They have seen nothing but the loving side of man 
and know us as we should be. 

The brood-mares in their shaggy winter coats are ou 
in the paddock in the snow. 

The nine-day-old colt, dropped out of season, is in the 
heated stable with her dam, and runs up to us 
like a pet dog. 

They are almost human, these graceful, affedlionate 
creatures, and the eight-months' black colt, the 
pride of the farm (who has a mile record already 
to his credit and is led out every day for the 
owner to feast his eyes upon) , seems to know 
his high birth and breeding. 

O horse, brother and companion and equal of hunts- 
man and soldier — 
Nobler than lion or tiger or polar bear — 
Has your strenuous master, astride of you, ever be- 
thought himself that you are the handiwork of 
fright and timidity ? 

no 



Farm Pictures 

Produdl of centuries long of running away, you sur- 
pass the produdls of ages of combat. 

With no weapons but your Parthian heels, you have 
acquired what claws and teeth could never have 
won for you. 

Survival of the fleetest, you have outstripped the sur- 
vivals of the most belligerent. 

In you, cowardice throws down the gauntlet to cour- 
age, and nervousness to nerve. 



rv 

WHAT are you thinking of, my stalwart lad, as 
you plant Indian corn in the next row to me 
and cover it with your hoe ? 

I very much fear that, if your mind is working at all, 
you are thinking of your twenty dollars wage 
at the end of the month and of the instalment 
due on your bicycle, which must come out of it. 

If it were your own field, you would probably be cal- 
culating the market value of a bushel next 
winter. 

You see how it is : you are not looking straight at your 
work, but rather at what comes back to you 
from it. 

As you walk along, putting your hand deftly into your 
bag, your thoughts wander from your task to 
the return from it. 

Instead of looking at your work, you are really look- 
ing behind you. 

Ill 



Farm Pictures 

^ Eyes right ! Observe the seeds of com as they fall 
from your hand. 

Think of the harvest. 

Think of sturdy men and women, East and West, 
feasting on the corn cake and Indian meal and 
hominy. 

Think of useful cattle and hard-worked horses relish- 
ing the sweet ears. 

Be proud that you sustain scores of lives, and know 
more of real honor and honesty than all the 
bustling men in town. 



There are great possibilities in our corn-field, if you 

would but explore them. 
Look at your work, and you will see further into the 

world than j^our inch-deep planting. 
Nay, you may even get a glimpse at the very secret of 

things. 
J All the revolution that mankind is yearning for is just 

this : to make men look in the diredlion of their 

work, to emphasize service and not wages, to 

ask How much good will it do ? and not Does 

it pay ? 
Eyes right ! and you will do your share in setting the 

world straight. 
And corn will be worth more in those days, too, 
For it will be a message of good will, and to eat it will 

be a feast of thankfulness. 



113 



Farm Pictures 



THE buckwheat-field is a-buzz with bees, and here 
and there dusky butterflies dot the snowy ex- 
panse. 

Oh, the white-green buckwheat ! 

As I gaze at the curling edge of the field from where 
I stand in the close-mown meadow, and watch 
the afternoon sunlight melting through, it looks 
like a line of emerald foam-topped billows, and 
the bees and butterflies are playing in the spray. 

The air is heavy with the prophetic smell of dark- 
brown honey. 

Behold a land flowing with milk and honey indeed ! 
It is more than a figure of speech, for there it 
lies stretched out before me. 

Perhaps I might draw some lesson from it, even as the 
bees suck out its very essence. 

But no ; to-day the buckwheat-field is enough, just as 
it lies there, green and white in the sun. 

VI 

IN the old meadow — unshorn now these three years, 
its locks were so thin — 
L,ittle birch-trees are springing up here and there with 
pendent, tremulous leaves, their tops almost as 
high as my knee. 
lyong ago this was all woodland, and we still call it, 
in good old doubtful Dutch, the "Buccobush" 
(the birchwood). 

113 



Farm Pictures 

All these years the forest has lain in wait under the 

ground watching its opportunity. 
All these years it has let the plowshare glide over its 

head. 
All these years it has submitted to the tiresome round 

of Indian corn, oats, winter grain, and the half 

dozen seasons of grass. 
But now, as soon as a vulnerable breach appears in 

the toilsome tidy years, it rushes in helter- 
skelter. 
The wilderness is the hungry residuary devisee of all 

our estates. 
The forest lurks impatient under every meadow. 

And in us, beneath the cultivated surface, is there not 
a wild birch wood, too, thrusting its shoots up to 
the light ? 

Is the savage in us buried so very deep ? 

What is there between us, O wild mother earth, but a 
thin partition of labored culture ? 



VII 



THE farm-hand has finished his evening chores, 
and is walking homeward around the corner of 
the barn in the mud. 
You can hear the horses crunching their oats inside 

almost as loud as a grist-mill. 
The other men have already gone, and he alone is in 
sight. 

114 



Farm Pictures 

But no, down the hill comes the owner of the estate. 
He calls the laborer and holds out his wages to him, 

for it is the last day of the month. 
The man approaches, sheepishly, takes the roll of 

bills, and thrusts it into his waistcoat pocket 

with his thumb. 
He has no manners, and neither touches his hat nor 

says ' * Thank you ' ' for the money. 
But then his employer has no manners either, and 

does not touch his hat nor thank him for his 

month of hard toil. 



What are they thinking of, these two men — the rich 
man, fresh and clean in the best of riding- 
clothes, and the workman, in his stained red 
shirt-sleeves and top-boots covered with man- 
ure? 

The laborer is thinking, " What a lucky fellow I am, 
with a steady job all the year round, my wages 
olways paid on the day, and a pretty easy boss 
to get on with in the bargain ! ' ' 

The employer is thinking, *' Why should this man be 
working for a loafer like me and not I for 
him? 

His days are as full, as mine are empty, of useful- 
ness. 

I ought to be ashamed to masquerade through life 
as his superior. 

Why was I born into such a topsyturvy world ? ' ' 

"5 



Farm Pictures 



vni 



THE funeral of a farm-laborer's young wife is 
passing over the hill. 

The dominie drives ahead in his buggy. 

Then comes the hearse, followed by half a dozen car- 
riages. 

In the first sit the bereaved mother and husband. 

She is weeping, heart-broken, yet thinking what a fine 
funeral it is and what an impression it will 
make on the village. 

He is recalling sadly the historj^ of his two years of 
married life, the dead baby, the empty home, 
all the little plans for a lifetime so soon brought 
to an end. 

Now he must sell the furniture they were so proud of 
and board again with the farmer. 

He rubs his red eyes with his awkward, wrinkled 
black glove, and leaves a dark purple streak on 
his cheek. 

I had not expelled to see a funeral, and yet it fits in 

with everything else, as all things natural do. 
It is the first day with a touch of Spring in it. 
Spring has really arrived, and I have come out as a 

reporter, note-book in hand, to interview her as 

a distinguished stranger. 
I turn away from the black procession and I see the 

distant mountains as snowy still as the Alps. 
Here around us the snow has almost disappeared, but 

ii6 



Farm Pictures 

to the north of each clump of spruce-trees it lies 

like a white shadow. 
The ducks have rediscovered the pond, hidden until 

last week under a foot or more of ice and snow. 
Now and then an enterprising frog croaks feebly. 
White horsehair lies about the stable like little tufts 

of fur. 
There is a tinge of green in the grass on the south 

slope of the lawn. 
In the woods there is scarcely a sign of the coming 

change, and last year's dead oak leaves still 

hang on bravely. 
In the orchard robins and song-sparrows are singing, 

and one bluebird has fallen, like a drop of sky, 

into a bare apple-tree. 
I hear the woodpecker at work at his xylophone, pick- 
ing out the best instrument he can find. 
Beyond the road a farm-hand is drilling oats, with the 

long summer stretching out before him. 
A pair of black butterflies, their wings tipped with 

yellow, are flying and flirting in the warm sun- 
shine. 
The air is hazy, and the smell of burning leaves and 

brush makes me drowsy. 
The sun is crying * * Wake up ! " and the earth is 

yawning and stretching and saying, "It isn't 

quite time to get up yet." 
Nevertheless the young life is pulsing everywhere. 
Love, hope, and strength are all alive just below the 

surface. 



T17 



Farm Pictures 

The carriages are coming back from the funeral. 

The mother has stopped crying and is putting her hat 

straight. 
The husband has just made up his mind not to sell 

the furniture — he will store it instead. Who 

knows ? Some day it may come in handy. 
And the wife over the hill — if she sees them she is 

not angry. 
She is smiling, wherever she is, for there is love and 

hope and strength and Spring for her also. 

IX 

IT is September. They are at work in the woods 
getting out stone for the new barn. 
One man leans with his back against the great rock 

holding a drill between his legs with both 

hands. 
Two men, standing one on each side, bring down 

their sledge-hammers with wonderful precision 

on the head of the drill, which he turns round 

mechanically at each stroke. 
The * * chink-chink-chink ' ' echoes through the woods. 
The men talk carelessly of this and that, unmindful of 

their skill and usefulness. 
Broken stones lie about their feet, and there is a pile 

of them over there waiting for the cart to carry 

them away. 
The rock is split here and there ; and where it has 

been torn away we see the flattened root of 

ii8 



Farm Pictures 

a tottering black birch- tree, which has been 

swelling imprisoned in a crevice for years. 
The arms and faces of the men are sunburned, and 

their clothing is worn and discolored. 
There is a faint smell of powder, sweat, and birch bark 

in the air. 

In the neighboring field a sturdy lad is plowing with 
a team of bays. 

He guides the plow with both hands, the reins pass- 
ing round his waist. 

The plowshare twists out a long ribbon of green sod, 
and deposits it, with the shiny brown side up, 
in the next furrow. 

A score of crow-blackbirds strut about over the fresh 
upturned soil. 

Not far away is the big house, where on the veranda 
well-dressed, able-bodied men and women are 
sipping superfluous tea and talking of idle jour- 
neys and novels and pastimes. 

And on them all the all-forgiving sun is shining. 



WHAT a grand game golf would be on these 
Odlober days (so I think to myself as I stride 
up the hill toward the putting-green near the 
half-yellowed oak-grove at the top) — 
What a grand game golf would be if that man over 

119 



Farm Pictures 

the fence there on the left would only stop 
plowing for winter grain ! 

Now we have holed in, and my companion in pink 
shirt and knickerbockers is driving from the 
tee. 

With an easy sweep he sends his ball skimming mirac- 
ulously through the air, and it lands well beyond 
the bunker far below us. 

I follow, but I still have that wretched plowman in the 
corner of my eye, and my ball bumps lamely 
down the slope. 

If I am to go on playing golf we must put up a seven- 
foot wall around the links. 

There are twenty-two people indulging in the game 
this morning besides me (I have just counted 
them — men and women and boys and girls) , and 
almost all have sharp eyes. 

Is it not rather odd that not one of them has seen that 
plowman — that, in fa(5l, in the whole course 
of their existence they have never seen a live 
plowman ? 

They may look at him as he stumbles along behind 
his plow, but they do not see him. 

They will dine sumptuously to-night on the bounty 
which he and his fellows provide. 

They will perhaps go through the form of thanking 
God for what they receive, but they will forget 
to give thanks to the plowman, without whom 
God would quite justly have left them to starve. 

I20 



Farm Pictures 

Their only sensation will be the comfortable one of 
having passed a profitable day in chasing a 
rubber ball. 

They will not think of the caddies whom we have 
beguiled and perverted into believing that golf 
is the serious business of life. 

They give no thought, as they read the name of 
• ' Silvertown ' ' on the white balls, to the toilers 
in East London slums whom they allure into 
useless labor, nor to the ever-increasing num- 
ber of lives wasted in ministering to their idle- 
ness and luxury, and the ever-growing burden 
which they are heaping upon the plowman's 
stooping back. 

" Live on other people's labor " — that is the device of 
our nobility. 

Knowing this, how can I look the plowman in the 
face, cleek in hand, without blushing? 

Yet we forsooth are the custodians of honor ! 

The vulgar plowman, who feeds fifty of us for a bare 
living for himself, he is ignorant of honor. 

He may be low enough to steal apples from our trees 
(which he planted and for which he cares), and 
in case of need he might be willing to beg. 

Naturally we, whose whole life is nourished by what 
we steal and beg from him, look down upon 
him, while he, poor idiot, very likely looks up 
at us. 

Oh, for a little sense of humor in this ridiculous world, 

121 



Farm Pictures 

to laugh away the shams and put us out of 
countenance ! 
The sight of a man at his plow should be enough to 
paralyze every right hand that grasps a golf- 
club, and with it the fruit of another's toil. 



XI 

OVER the quiet afternoon pasture, where the cows 
are browsing with their leader at their head, 
each knowing the place to which her courage 
and charadler entitle her ; 

Over the flock of sheep on the other side of the rough 
stone wall, where the gray fleeces cluster thick 
to keep out the November north wind ; 

Over the peaceful barnyard yonder, where the calves 
are waiting for the tardy pail and the chickens 
are scratching for their supper — 

Over it all (as I gather nuts under the clump of hick- 
ory-trees in the corner of the cow-pasture, where 
the sluggish brook winds its way and the sun's 
rays slant brightly through the trunks) — 

Over it all I see the dull, inevitable shadow of the 
butcher's knife. 

All nature round me is beautiful and suggestive and 
full of interest. 

The narrow path of the woodchuck in the grass lead- 
ing to his back door and looking almost as if it 
had been made by a single wheel ; 

122 



Farm Pictures 

The wisp of hay still clinging to the stray apple-tree 
where the hay loads passed four months ago ; 

The half-torpid bees haunting the sunshine in the gar- 
den and kissing the chrysanthemums a last 
good-by ; 

The great procession of cawing crows pursuing their 
regular avenue in the sky to the southwest, 
with bands of stragglers behind — 

How full it all is of life and mystery and romance and 
solace ! 

But it can not conceal the butcher's knife looming 
above the farm and every farm. 

The black cow is lowing uneasily toward the barn- 
yard, and her calf, taken from her after a few 
hours of wonderful common life, answers in a 
high note. 

The calves are sucking each other's ears for want of 
their dams, and one of them has already one ear 
sucked to half the size of the other. 

In the pigsty, in enforced filth and idleness, the pigs 
will pass a wintry night in two inches of freez- 
ing slime, without a dry spot to lie on. 

Visions of cattle- trains, foodless and waterless, in 
frigid cold and torrid heat for weary days ; 

Of cattle-ships in storms, the maimed and dying 
thrown together ; 

Of herds of steers, benumbed and starving in the snows 
of the Northwest ; 

Of huge abattoirs, with hardened men and boys in 

123 



Farm Pictures 

bloody aprons and noble animals crazed with 

fright ; 
Of little slaughter-houses in the country, with their 

heaps of offal and vile stenches polluting the 

meadows — 
Visions such as these hang over the farm. 

Death is natural, I own, and without it this world 
might be cursed with life ; 

But when it comes at the edge of the cold and sharp- 
ened steel, at the behest of man's perverted 
appetite and cruel will, and strikes the young 
and lusty and vigorous ; 

When death is made the chief end of life, and life 
becomes the handmaid of death, and nature is 
prostituted to the express manufacture of fat- 
tened corpses — 

Then is death hideous indeed. 

And over all the autumn beauties of sight and scent 
and feeling broods lowering the shadow of the 
needless butcher's knife. 



XII 

MORE beautiful than the rosy sunsets of the Nile, 
mixing sand and sky in far-away mysteries of 
splendor ; 
More beautiful than the foggy lagoons of the North, 

with their delicate and subtile tones of gray; 
More beautiful than dark ravine and snowy waterfall — 

124 



Farm Pictures 

Is to me the sight of the hen in the barnyard, swelling 
with prote(5lion and pride over her new-hatched 
chicks as they peer out from under her feathers ; 

Or the cat in the kitchen licking her soft kittens, whose 
eyes are not yet open ; 

Or the young wife, merged in her baby, as she gazes 
upon it and presses it to her bosom. 

How hospitably Nature puts forth all her best for the 
reception of these little immigrants from the 
invisible as they land upon our foreign shore ! 

" It is a world of love," she tells them, and for a time 
they find it so. 

Only as we grow older, she seems to become dis- 
appointed in us, and weans us from her and her 
primal loving purpose ; 

But still she is never discouraged, and she turns with 
the same extended hand and the same warm, 
miraculous welcome to the ever- arriving host of 
little wanderers. 

Dear Nature, I have well observed your friendliness 
to the stranger, and, knowing you as I do, how 
can I fear the voyage which you will call upon 
me to make into the great Unknown ? 

I am satisfied that I shall find you there, even as I 
found you here, awaiting me with motherly, 
outstretched arms ; 

Your first look, at any rate, will be one of eager, affec- 
tionate greeting. 

125 



The Sheep-Dog 



The Sheep-Dog j^ 

1 BELIEVE in the world. 
I stake my reputation as a prophet on its future. 

I am sure that it will come out all right in the end, and 
that is the reason why I am forever worrying it 
and barking at it like a shepherd's dog driving 
sheep. 

If I did not think it would keep to the right road 
in the long run, I would not trouble myself 
about it. 

The sheep-dog enjoys life, too, as well as any one, but, 
alas ! why is it that the sheep always misunder- 
stand him and his intentions ? 



Epilog j^' 

OYE who preach in season and out of season (am 
I not one of them?), hold your peace, for the 

wind of heaven is blowing ! 
O ye who insist upon lighting the world, snuff out 

your smoking torches, for the Sun himself is 

shining ! 
No longer teach, but be taught ; no longer warm, but 

be warmed ; no longer mold, but be molded. 
Let yourselves flow into the wind and melt into the 

sunshine, and feel for once the quiet power of 

God. 

126 



A BRILLIANT SATIRE ON MILITARISM 

CAPTAIN JINKS, HERO 

By Ernest Crosby 



A SATIRICAL novel based on the military history 
of the United States since the outbreak of the 
Spanish War. It is a smiting denunciation of 
militarism and the military spirit, and a biting bur- 
lesque on cheap hero worship. The parallel between 
savagery and soldiery is unerringly drawn. It is full 
of wit and sarcasm. 

The Philadelphia Item, March 8: "It is the best bit 
of satire that has seen the light for years. It is more 
than clever : it is brilliant. Its sarcasm is like pointed 
steel, while its humor is of the most rollicking order. 
In fact, it is hilarious with fun, while its pungency in 
satire is remarkable for keenness, and for the incisive 
way in which every point is driven home." 

Worcester Spy, Worcester, Mass. , March 9 : " Beard's 
illustrations are equally clever and original, the best 
that he has ever made. As a collection of cartoons 
alone the book should make a hit." 



Twenty-five Clever Drawings by Dan Beard. 12mo,Chth. Orna- 
mental Cover. Price, $1.50. post-paid. 



FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers, 
New York & London 



JAN 22 1903 



